"The Boy From the 'Good' Family" by Emily Strempler

All were waiting for that wary bird, the capitalist, to come along and convert their airy visions into substantial reality.” — The Calgary Daily Herald, 1906

“She is Not a Metropolis”: Land Speculation, Settler Politics, and the Invention of Silver City

“…Olivia wants to be a fun girl. She wants to be chill about things. Not like last night, when she didn’t have the pills, and the drinks didn’t hit so nice, and she ended up yelling at a guy from the maintenance department…”

Bad Trip

“She slides the test into her binder and turns the phrase over in her mind. 'Boys don’t like girls who are too smart.' Adds it to a pile of similar statements. A list that grows and grows, until it seems to encompass every conceivable thing..."

A Likeable Girl

“The President had announced the curfew at the beginning of the month, in a special 9am broadcast sent out to all of the country’s televisions and radios. There was a war on, he said, a war against ‘the criminal element’…”

War Story

"The bedroom wasn’t built for a couple. The walls were lined with cabinets, a narrow, anti-bac foam mattress wedged into a bunk under a small frosted window. Books, clothes, and keepsakes overflowed storage onto the floor..."

Apartment 1848

"Through her earbuds, the crash had been muffled but close, reverberating through a shared wall between the two apartments..."

People Next Door

“‘I just don’t think I could ever be friends with a girl like that!’ She spits it, her nose crinkling up. ‘How could you be?’”

The Space Between

"Rounding the bend, she felt the animal before she saw it, the great towering mass of it, the huff of its breath in the dark..."

The Encounter

"If it comes from God, they said, it isn’t wrong. And he came from God, didn’t he?"

Godsend

"Boy, you always did have those eyes, didn’t you?

Prairie highway for a gaze, boy

Due South to Mexico, West to the coast, boy

Anywhere but here in a third-hand pickup..."

Runaway

“Take me back to the birch bark grove

Where the trees stretch skyward, slender

And the ground is soft in spring..."

Wildflowers

"The times were far from happy, but they were stable and predictable in their badness, and that was almost good, in its own way."

Once Upon a Time in Maryland

"Boxes of cellulose capsules sat open on the table beside a stack of books. Herbs steeped in large jars. There was lab equipment out on the counter, next to a row of slow cookers plugged into a portable battery."

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