brevity
Head fogged with a light fever, I open the door and hope that, for once, she'll say nothing and leave quickly.
etiolated
His parting emails, echoing an earlier confusion about what he wants and how he means to act in a relationship.
gritty
Pencil shavings in a pink pencil case.
laugh track
They watch the episode again, this time to revisit all the parts they found funny the first time around and see if I'll laugh too.
neural
The fourth and fifth fingers burn with a muffled electricity, as if they're stuffed with poorly insulated wires.
precocity
The persona she adopts to protect herself is the bright girl who doesn't have patience for adult silliness. She knows everything and let's every taunt roll off her. That's what she wants you to believe, so that you don't look more closely at her.
spacey
She writes a sentence, stops, stares at the book spines, forgets how she meant to continue. She crosses out the sentence, begins again, stops, stares at the far wall, the pencil tip wobbling on the lined paper.
