How Does It End?

Studio 360

Last December,Linda Brewer, an administrator at a skin cancer lab in Tucson, resolved to write a short story every month in 2013. By year’s end she hopes to have them published.


June Update:

Quickly done, needs work as usual. I kept wanting to look this story up on the website so I could see how it ended, and then realized I hadn’t finished it yet. I am determined to start July’s story tomorrow — no more mad dashes the last week of the month. Thank you for your kind encouragement. This is such an unusual experience, so removed from my day job, sometimes it’s hard to know which one is Real Life.

It is a zillion degrees here in Tucson. My friends and I ran this morning at 5:30 and it was already 90 ninety degrees.

This is part of the opening of my story for June: “Mr Q.: A Memoir”

“You girls play outside for a while,” my mom said. Mary and I had been having a tea party in the living room with my dolls. Mary’s party dress had soaked up a cup of fruit punch and was sticking to her fat tummy. “Hold still. You’ve got icing in your hair,” my mom said in an exasperated voice, dabbing at Mary’s hair with a damp towel. She whispered, “born in a barn,” and my grandma nodded. I was now five years old, and I had chosen to wear my cowboy boots and red cowboy hat along with my lacy party dress. I hadn’t taken the hat off all day, not even when my grandma, with a significant look at Mary, offered to check our heads for lice.

Read all of “Mr Q.: A Memoir”

Read more of Linda’s stories

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