A parent tucks their seven-year-old into bed after a long day. The child asks if they're okay. A small question that lands heavy.
…The dome sat in its column of moonlight, gleaming with a cold and patient light; the thing beneath it showed how violence is present when the hand above it hasn't yet decided….
…Leo eased the door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. Stood still. Let the darkness settle around him. The house breathed its sounds back at him, a refrigerator somewhere, a clock, the deep, specific silence of a place where someone was asleep. He'd learned to read that silence years ago. It had a texture. A weight….
“How often? All the time. Constantly. Every Tuesday and Thursday, watching for when Bernard would walk through those doors. Every time he came to the gym on Saturdays hoping Bernard would be there, or hoping he wouldn't be, Will could never decide which. Lying in bed at night replaying their arguments, thinking of better comebacks, getting angry all over again at something Bernard had said hours earlier.”
“Bernard had been living in Will's head rent-free for a year and a half and Will had told himself it was because he hated him.”
A villain's plan to expose three mermaids falls apart when she can't lift the Hydrow rower she needs.
A Viking chief rallies his crew for battle until a cheerful Hydrow athlete rows past their warship.
A woman realizes tissue paper and toilet paper aren't the same thing—but Charmin works for both.
A single mother sneaks beneath the bleachers during her kid's football game to meet the father of her child's worst enemy. Then her phone explodes with texts: his son just hit hers.