Happiness is a choice. That phrase is etched in my mind. Not because it’s true, but because it was the calibration clinics’ slogan. I’m talking about forty years ago. After the practice was legalized, but before the first home care kits....

Yonkers sprawled out below me, rotting in places, shiny in others. Vehicles the size of toys tooled along, too far away for me to hear their engines. In the parking lot directly below me, two kids who’d been trying to sneak a smoke were being marched back into the building by a gray-haired security guard....

As grandiose as the public memorial was, with all its speeches and pomp, the burial was just me, my two remaining aunts on my mom’s side, and a few friends. And when that was done, I went back to his house—back home—by myself....

A warm sense of accomplishment coils inside Kallie’s gut when she enters Madame Leutho’s Pawn Shop. She’s made it. Her daughter will be provided for, for another week. She takes small steps inside the cramped, low-ceilinged shop, clutching the bundle of this week’s loot to her chest....

In the beginning, dust motes drift gently in the light. Later, they seem to feel their own way, scattering to the four winds. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the words that form the worlds settle into their forms, turning into sounds which are in turn heard as stories....

The remote controls were given out freely to anybody who wanted one. They said the light will blink on every remote, come October 3rd. It will blink for fifteen minutes. Anyone who presses the button during that time will have voted....