After punching his
time card, Martin Lain shrugged on his jacket and took up his
lunchbag. Connie, on the phone with a patient, waved to him as he
left the GI clinic. Biting wind hit him outside. Martin hated the
cold and squeezed himself tightly together. His car's heater didn't
work. He desperately wanted to be warm.
At the apartment, he
found a note on the door.
SORRY!!! HEATER'S
BUSTED. TOTALLY GOING TO GET IT FIXED SOON! I SWEAR.
Martin groaned,
thumping his head on the door. This was t

“You just heard a
portion of Toshiro Miyazuki's Nirvana symphony.
Coming up in the next half hour, we have a little piece of Handel
you've lost under the rug and, after that, a composer from the west
side of South Africa, with the sounds of clamor and reconciliation.
This is K-3-Lambda, this is Kasey, and coming up now is the national
news.”
Kasey
gave Kylie the sign to cut the recording. She switched to the NPR
newsfeed. The mic light in the studio blinked out. Kasey gave a sigh
of release

After lunch, Sierra
took the CD cases hidden between her mattress and bed frame, and she
stuffed them into her backpack. She could still hear her parents
talking in the living room so she knew they wouldn't walk in on her
as she took one last look at the case for the Dhammapada.
She mouthed, “All we are is a result of what we have thought,” to
herself before shoving the case in along with the rest. Then, she
buried the cases under an assortment of pamphlets for the church.
“Going
to preac

Mr. Dorien showed up
to class Monday with a very large stomach sagging over his dress
pants. The wet grumbles filled the classroom and everyone looked
around, trying to figure out who was getting expelled this time. Of
course, Jason already knew. He hung his head down, trying not to
obviously stare at his handsome teacher's distended gut, as if his
guilt would appear, bright on his face, if he did.
After all, he placed
the note in Mr. Dorien's box, ratting out Stacy Lynn for her little
predator

Eric Foller owned Data
Mines Inc., a business he started himself in his garage. Now
employing over a hundred people in a two-story office building, he
planned to gut the company, take the profits, and retire into the
woods where he could spend the days reading Thoreau and Emerson.
Neither Foller's
employees nor his investors knew his plans. As far as Foller knew,
the only one aware of his company's eventual destruction was the man
across the table from him in the DMI conference room, the owner