Posts Tagged ‘Young Adult fiction’

quiet car

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Cast of Wonders 496: Excuse Me, this is the Quiet Car

Cast of Wonders 496: Excuse Me, this is the Quiet Car is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:20 — 21.1MB)

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Excuse me, this is the Quiet Car

by Cara Mast

The magic of the quiet car is best when everyone follows the rules.

I’m halfway through the math problem I’ve been mulling over when a sudden bleep-bleep-bring-a-ling in the quiet makes me jump, slamming my knees into the fold-down tray table. Ouch.

And then, as if the phone ringing wasn’t enough, the man across the aisle from me picks up. “This is Paul Whitford. Yeah, hey Jerry, what do you need?”

White- and grey-haired heads pop up from the seats ahead of our row, the usual crowd of over-65’s turning to look for the disturbance. I really just want to go back to my problem set. The train shakes audibly around us, more like a throat clearing than regular train rumbles, and I’m pretty sure that’s a warning at this point. I’d rather not find out. Much as I’d like to ignore this guy, he’s now made his business everyone’s business. (Continue Reading…)

creation of Adam

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Cast of Wonders 495: And I Will Make Thy Name Great

Cast of Wonders 495: And I Will Make Thy Name Great is a Cast of Wonders original.

[Content warnings: religion, Abrahamic monotheism, God, mentions of war and genocide, religious humor.]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:52 — 30.2MB)

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And I Will Make Thy Name Great

by Louis Evans

Abraham, the potter’s son, was sweeping out the workshop late one night, the air hot, the sweat beading on his brow, the kiln still radiating the baking heat it had absorbed over the course of the day.

This was when he heard the voice.

“Boy!”

Abraham looked around.

No source of the voice was apparent. No person had stepped into the shed, nor were the flames of a djinn visible. Four copies of the idol of Suen, god of the moon and chief among gods, were cooling on the shelf opposite the kiln, and sometimes Suen spoke to believers, but the idols were not yet consecrated and certainly could not host the presence of the god. No raven perched in the workshop’s eaves, croaking out an imitation of speech. Abraham was baffled. (Continue Reading…)

moon, clouds, nebula

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Cast of Wonders 494: The Day I Didn’t Get a Pet Nebula

Previously published in the Drabblecast, April 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:35 — 29.0MB)

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The Day I Didn’t Get a Pet Nebula

by Effie Seiberg

On the day I turned nine, I didn’t get a pet nebula.

I’d really really wanted one, just like the one Shelly had. And I’d been talking about it FOR-EVER, so Dad could have the time to save up for the one in the pawn shop, and I’m not usually patient enough to talk about anything that long. I told him how responsible I was and how I could take it for walks and trim its dust wisps and everything. I made him breakfast when he got home from his shift a bunch of times, and even did the dishes after to prove how responsible I was.

“C’mon kiddo, you know that’s not possible,” he’d said, ten rotation cycles before my birthday. We were at the wobbly kitchen table and he was helping me with my physics homework after dinner, so everything still smelled like tacos with neutron star shavings and spray cheese. The chapter was all about distortions of spacetime, cosmic strings and black holes and whatnot. He leaned his head on one tentacle, like he was too tired to hold it up on its own. Even his work shirt looked tired, like the frayed thin patches were struggling to hold his tentacles in. “A pet nebula isn’t happening.” (Continue Reading…)

infinity space

Cast of Wonders 493: One Day in Infinity

Cast of Wonders 493: One Day in Infinity is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:31 — 20.3MB)

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One Day in Infinity

by Beth Goder

Walrus reaches her hands down into a supermarket in Oregon, willing the roof translucent. Time is frozen like the fish sticks in aisle seven. She weaves her hands through shoppers, careful not to nudge the boy bouncing in the cart or the old man in front of the cake mixes. She breathes in the smell of cucumbers, a loamy quality that speaks of the ground they came from.

First, she removes salmonella from a carton of eggs, sucking out disease until only a swirl of white and yolk remains. She caresses the fish in the display case to tell them they are loved. Next, she sees if anyone is going to die. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 485: Simons, Far and Near

Cast of Wonders 485: Simons, Far and Near is a Cast of Wonders original.

Character death; Radiation sickness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:52 — 43.4MB)

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Simons, Far and Near

by Ana Gardner

Days after a solar hurricane fried Western Europe, nations across the world gathered their brightest grade-schoolers, and they launched us into space with promises of glory and cake.

Solar storms were worsening ahead of schedule, said government men in wrinkled suits, as they pulled us from our underground shelters and stuffed us into armored tanks. The exodus ships, forced to launch early, weren’t ready to sustain endless space travel. They’d need places to land, shelters for their thousands of passengers, far from our ever-deadlier sun.

And someone had to travel on ahead and build those shelters.

Fortunately, we learned as we marched up the launch ramp, Earth had a few shuttles ready for immediate departure. Sure, they had poor radiation shields and leaky engines, but wouldn’t you know it? Shuttle travel damaged the body worst after puberty. Kids had great odds of surviving a trip across the solar system.

‘Great odds’—those were the words they used, and they loaded us into hastily-cobbled ships and chucked us from burning Earth like spores from a coughing fungus. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 484: Langsuir (Staff Picks 2021)

Original published as Cast of Wonders Episode 453 on May 26, 2021

This story features stillbirth, death, murder, abuse, rape, slavery and misogyny.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:42 — 22.1MB)

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Langsuir

by Nadia Mikail

The langsuir is a woman who has died giving birth. Malay folktales have a multitude of women featured as wrathful, devious spirits: the hantu kum-kum thrives on the blood of virgin girls, desperate to maintain her youth even in death; the hantu kopek lures men to cheat on their wives, jealous that their afterlife contains no husband of their own; the pontianak goes after the people who have wronged her, tearing out their organs.

People usually shake their heads, they think: oh, well, that is the envious, terrible nature of Eve. Personally I think it is more how humans are treated in life that influences how they behave in death, and in this culture the women are angrier than most. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 483: Armed With Such Stories, I Roamed Into The Woods (Staff Picks 2021)

Original published as Cast of Wonders Episode 456 on June 13, 2021

Multiple profanities

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:30 — 43.2MB)

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Armed With Such Stories, I Roamed Into The Woods

by Evan Marcroft

Never trust a wolf’s promise, Atticus, my mother once told me. Remember the tale of Smiling John and Baron Icepelt. They lie between fangs, and their promises will only ever lead you into their belly. She was full of such morsels of wisdom. There was a fable for every lesson I should know. Not all pertained to talking wolves, but this was most relevant to my task. Remember how Smiling John escaped. If you should find a wolf at your heels, throw meat behind you. Wolves are clever but lazy creatures. They will stop for the easier meal.

Armed with such stories, I roamed into the woods to save her life. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 482: In Real Time (Staff Picks 2021)

Original published as Cast of Wonders Episode 465 on September 12, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:12 — 30.8MB)

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In Real Time

by Avra Margariti

The kites frozen across the sky dapple the lawn like stained glass. Human statues dot the park, caught mid-motion: picnicking, dog-walking, sun-bathing. They might have been unnerving, once. Now, the utter stillness and silence soothes me like nothing else. In Frozen Time, scents are amplified tenfold. Grass, flowers, sugar. I drop a few coins into a vendor’s tip jar, then fill a clear bag with candy worms, chewing as I stroll down the small hill.

When a shape weaves between the stationary people, I think it’s only an optical illusion. A vase, two faces, now a vase again.

I blink, and the silhouette has drawn closer. It belongs to a kid not much younger than me in appearance, although there’s really no way to tell with people like us, who know how to manipulate time. The kid nods at me, casual like we’re meeting in the street and not in a frozen world, then steals a fistful of my candy.

“Who are you?” I ask once my tongue unglues itself from my palate. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 481: Factory Mother (Staff Picks 2021)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episode 461 on August 11, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:02 — 32.5MB)

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Factory Mother

by Sid Jain

The mushroom mycelia sundering in the pale, hot fermentation medium reminded Hanifa of her apartment building melting in Old Delhi: when concrete flowed like lava and spilled her life onto the streets.

“Hani, you with me?”

Hani blinked twice. “Yes, Gary.”

She stepped away from the sightglass, away from her memories. She was here, now, contained by the blistered grey walls of Mycagen Foods, in Durham, North Carolina. Here, the air didn’t slough the skin off newborns in their crib.

Gary, her night shift supervisor, rapped on his handheld tablet with his four fingers impatiently. “We don’t have all night, Hanifa.”

Well, Gary, she thought, learn to wait as I have. I’ve been waiting to be American for years. We all have our vigils to keep. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 480: The Umbra

Cast of Wonders 480: The Umbra is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:57 — 16.9MB)

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The Umbra

by Johnny Caputo

The Umbra glided from rooftop to rooftop, his footing sure and light. The soles of his boots made no sound as he bounded from shingle to snowy shingle because he was silence incarnate, justice in the night. The Keepers, oblivious in their cushy, heated houses below, were too busy stuffing their gluttonous faces or resting their slothful heads to be aware of his presence. But soon enough, they would know the terror the darkness brings. The Umbra would teach them the true definition of justice. He would make them feel the wrath of—

Dave stubbed his toe on a snow-covered, rooftop skylight. He took a tumble and nearly cracked his head against the gravel. Luckily, he wasn’t going nearly as fast as he would have liked to imagine, so he managed to get his arms underneath him to soften the blow. He sat there for a terrible, silent moment, feeling the full sting of his mishap in both his hands and his pride. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 479: Loving the Falls (Staff Picks 2021)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders episode 463

Suicidal ideation; death; divorce

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:47 — 35.2MB)

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Show Notes

An incomplete selection of support charities:

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

https://www.save.org/

https://www.papyrus-uk.org

https://www.samaritans.org

https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Loving the Falls

by Marie Vibbert

I was in love with falling water. If I stared at a waterfall long enough, it pulled me to jump in. I could read the signs about sharp rocks and imagine the looks of disapproval that warned me against it, but I was always going to give in some day. I did, in my senior year of high school, during the spring flood. The vitality of the river was over-the-top, the surface all surge and deft scoops. I imagined it’d be like sliding on silk, or caramel, or running my body over God’s six-pack abs.

It wasn’t.

The impact hurt; rock cracked my butt like the water wasn’t there, and then I was breathing water, sputtering. I panicked and flailed, realizing I’d made a terrible mistake. My love was unrequited, leaving me nothing but a slush of pebbles and twigs and the slick-as-snot bottom. No glorious view of the edge, no anticipation, no acceptance. There was a brief moment of stomach-less-ness, and then I hit a wall of concrete and died. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 478: Cats of Fortune (Staff Picks 2021)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episode 464

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:55 — 33.3MB)

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Cats of Fortune

by Ivy Grimes

When I was a little girl, I thought Aunt Dee had everything. She had her own trailer, a video game console and six games, dozens of heavy pink-and-purple necklaces, and a yard full of cats. Ten, to be exact. They were all different colors, like the shoes in a rich woman’s closet, and they drank water from the birdbath and ate kibble from old pie tins. Best of all, Dee had a secret she shared only with me—the cats were lucky. (Continue Reading…)