After Brooke’s unspoken, stifling, six-month love affair with the senior from Boiceville (whose name shall never be mentioned), she regarded sex as the ultimate danger. Other risks only went so far and then you died. (She was still blithe about death because it hadn’t affected her yet.) [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] But sex? If it rose inside you, demanding abandon, and if you were a sixteen-year-old girl, you needed to act the opposite of how you f... Read Full Story

In the gallery’s workroom Tara was stringing metallic beads for a complicated necklace her mother had designed and wondering if Brooke ever realized how connected they were. Not just as sisters. But in how Brooke’s reckless persona made Tara appear sensible and calm. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Brooke took wild risks, got smacked around, and criticized. Book-smarts saved her from being entirely written off. But thanks to Brooke, Tara watched from ... Read Full Story

Brooke hated that Tara had called out her ex-boyfriend in front of his friends. Because Brooke was the senior boy’s secret. And especially because, Brooke tried to explain, he had used her. Gotten bored and forgotten her. Or pretended to. So when Tara rose to his bait, the pathetic−but over−situation only got sorrier. “Figure it out, Tara; now everybody knows.” [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Tara apologized and begged for details, which Brooke was an... Read Full Story

Brooke and their mother Connie overheard Tara on the phone. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Pop. Come over if you want. But you won’t change my mind.” “About what?” Connie asked when Tara hung up. “About God. He can’t force me into church.” Brooke said, “See ya.” She wasn’t hanging around for this. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Connie thought she better hang around, though, and called a friend to work at the Trinity Gallery, which sold arts and cr... Read Full Story

Tara considered wearing a few little braids by her face. Jazz up her colorless hair that refused to grow long. But if she got into that—how she looked—she’d miss the bus. Halfway down the stairs, she heard Brooke singing in the kitchen, “Never no more will I cry for him…” Their father liked Patsy Cline. Brooke, however, couldn’t sing. Really. She could not sing at all. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] After practically dying last night from drinking ha... Read Full Story

Unaware of it, Tara gloated when Brooke staggered home only forty minutes after she left. The back door slammed off the kitchen wall. Tara was upstairs watching a documentary about a boy who videotaped his truly embarrassing parents. [Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.] Their house was rickety but Brooke was causing a ruckus. So that while little Chester on TV told his bickering parents, “You guys are golden,” Tara visualized Brooke opening and closing the... Read Full Story

Brooke rode her bicycle along this path every day, including weekends. Already after seven, the evening had started changing from gold to silver. Bright flecks glinted off random pebbles when she peddled fast. But it was still warm enough for no sleeves. [Click here to read the first episode.] Matthew had invited Brooke to watch “Palimony,” her favorite movie and his first hit. His wife Sasha and her assistant had taken Dexter and Ivy home to California yesterday but Matthew needed another da... Read Full Story

Brooke, 15 about to turn 16, and Tara, 14 since May, disagreed on almost everything. But the evening before school opened, they agreed that people who compared them like breakfast cereals were so out of bounds. They didn’t see Brooke. They didn’t see Tara. They saw what they liked to imagine. At dinner with their mother they agreed that practically all the adults in their historic artsy town in the Catskill Mountains fixated on Brooke being the colorful intense sister and Tara the calm one. T... Read Full Story

Markham’s Pub is perfect for this neighborhood. Since I’m the bartender, I know the regulars. Roger and Jackson arrive after work without fail, and again after dinner. Friends since grade school, they’re grateful to still have jobs. Their girlfriends are nursing students. Zoë and Vanessa don’t come in when Roger and Jackson are here. They arrive earlier, drink wine near a window, and hold hands. Today after an hour of giggling and entwining pretty ankles under the table, the girls approach th... Read Full Story

Monday and Tuesday nights Rufus and I play two sets at Isabel’s Pub. Days, I work for Spokane’s city council. It’s not Madison Square Garden where The Opposites performed. And Rufus isn’t Hank, who could wrap his rhythms around my voice. But the beats Rufus puts together add brightness and hold space for my arpeggios. All my songs revolve around old-fashioned women’s blues. “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” “You Lost the Best Thing.” “Mean as You Are.” But that was always my style. Not necessarily my l... Read Full Story