Couch Baron and I parted ways at around 10:30 AM, he to the airport, I to find a post office that, if it exists, is in a Macy’s and I never found it. Back to …

I hadn’t let myself dwell on it, because what good would it have done except to paralyze me, but a part of me believed I wouldn’t get to California, that I would end up towed …

A man from Fresno quizzed me in the parking lot, not about the car, but about whether I’d come all that way by myself. “Courage…courage,” he said. I hadn’t thought of it that way…or not …

by Sarah D. Bunting
Playing a game in the car, 9-year-old Mary (Perla Haley-Jardine) covers her 16-year-old sister Kelly’s (Willa Holland) eyes. Then she covers her mother’s eyes for a minute, as a joke — but …

I stopped at a CVS on the way out of town to restock on sunscreen and snacks — a warehouse-size store with slot machines by the checkout. At ten in the morning, most of the …

by Tara Ariano
Dirty Dancing might be the first dance movie I ever really loved. I was thirteen when it came out, and my worry in revisiting it at the age of thirty-six was that it …

I began the day in a mood of grim exhilaration: the route promised the most daunting driving yet. The locals have accustomed themselves to it, no doubt, and developed methods of timing their drives and …

I’ve had Grandma on my mind a lot since Tuesday, the anniversary of her death. Thanks to the revelation the other day that the swimming hole is not an artifact of Twain’s America, but still …

I dragged my feet. I checked every room twice more than I needed to, in case I’d overlooked a cord, or a watch — I even “checked” outside, where none of these things would have …

by Adam Grosswirth
When Vlad (Vlad? Really?) arrives at musical-theater-themed Camp Ovation, he causes a stir by being the only new guy in a clique full of outcasts who’ve been coming to camp for many summers …