Larry Nailer lived down the street. He was older than me. I was six, he was eight. Larry and I cut a worm open once. At least, we started to cut a worm open once. Sort of hard to explain. Something else happened.

It was Saturday, I remember, early afternoon. I was picking dandelions out of the yard. Larry walked by. He said, hey. I said, hey. A pinkish-red thing squirmed in his hand. Wanna help me dissect a worm, he asked. 

I was surprised. Elated. Thrilled. Larry Nailer, I assumed, didn’t know I was alive. I was also unclear how “dissect” was defined. And what it entailed. But I thought he was cute. I wanted Larry Nailer to like me. I wanted to impress him so I said, okay.

The worm wiggled on, unaware of its fate. Larry took out his Swiss Army knife. And that’s when it happened. Pictures popped in my head, images straight from John Carpenter’s dreams. I tugged Larry’s sleeve. I said, what if it screams?

He looked at me—how can I put it—as

In media created for the 15-19 age group, especially dystopian and urban fantasy narratives, there is a trend of presenting the protagonist with two (or as many as six) virtues or ideals which are pitted against each other, due to circumstances which force those values to be expressed in their unhealthy extremes, to the exclusion of each other. Sometimes the young reader is railroaded by the narrative into agreeing with whichever side the protagonist ultimately

An alluvial plain is a flat, fan-shaped landform created by the long-term deposition of sediment by a river. Alluvial soil deposits form after repeated flooding of the area; an alluvial plain is usually formed from multiple, shifting floodplains over a very long period of time, from decades to centuries to millennia.

As a river flows it carries sediment, which settles to the bottom of the river. This slowly raises the river, leading to ever-increasing chance of flooding its banks.