Sunday Stories will resume on January 6, 2013. For now, please enjoy some highlights from the year. Visit our Sunday Stories page for more.

The man sitting next to the guy near the puke is wearing socks with flip-flops (not to be put up with at any hour). The way his big toe and second toe are separated by the flip flop through the sock makes me want to say: Don’t you see that? I mean, don’t you see how wrong that is?

– Victoria Comella, “Oh. It’s Puke.”

 But then Louisa discovered Broadway, the bright lights of the city, the filthy rush of taxis, the smell of Penn Station, portal to all this famous life: hot dogs, fried doughnuts, beer drank by handsome older men in suits. City life was for Louisa. That’s where the celebrities lived! She couldn’t wait to meet them. They would recognize her right away.

– Royal Young, “I’m Already Doing What I Want”

The next morning was my first day. I punched in a manila colored time card on one of those ancient machines. I’m struck by how loud it is. Sharon arrives work with a water bottle full of ginger and cinnamon sticks.  She informs me that the concoction keeps her healthy. She begins a relentless blitzkrieg of training while fingering a manifold of maps and manuals.

– Justin Maurer, “Down On the Boulevard”

Agata’s Uncle Augustyn was a brewer who lived near Lvoz—a “black sheep,” long estranged from the family due to his affiliation with the cult of the Swedenborgians known in the papers as The New Church. I had never set eyes upon the man myself, though I had heard tales of his great physical strength, and his uxoriousness, and of his clever wife who had once trained a whooper swan to fetch her sewing-basket.

– Matt Dojny, “True Pain For My False Friends”

He wasn’t valedictorian or anything, but you know what? I’d take my Victor over that Nowicki girl any day. I gave her a ride home from orchestra practice one day—her mother is blind and don’t think she won’t use it every chance she gets—and she got Pringle crumbs all over the backseat of my car. Then eight years later there she is bragging to everyone about how she got into Princeton. Probably she fed them some sob story about her mother.

– Katherine Carlson, “A Fine Thing”

Looking in the mirror at day old make up, I brush my teeth. Halfway through I stop to put on my bra then resume brushing my teeth. I wipe away the excess mascara and the junk that accumulated in the corners of my eyes – I think there’s blood in one corner but it turned out to be a small red feather.

– Lauren Marie Grant, “Red Feathers”

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