Day Off.

For the first time in a long time, I do not have any student stories to mark. I do not have to write a note of any sort explaining why it's my belief, M., that in your story, you may not have the twelve-year-old boy have a heart attack at the hospital doors after sprinting to said hospital to donate one of his kidneys to the thirteen-year-old girl suffering from kidney disease and upon whom he has a crush, only to wake up after the heart attack to discover that (a) she died before the kidney could be donated, (b) his heart had an inoperable hole in it, and thus (c) he's of course undergone heart transplantation surgery and now has within him, yes, the heart of the thirteen-year-old dead girl. About and to whom the opening reverie of the story was dedicated as she, as all thirteen-year-old girls do, swims naked with her boyfriend in the local creek.

From another story: "He stepped into the room like an inexperienced ninja."

I have slept late. I have been to the bookstore. It is 70 degrees outside. Though we are all of us, polar bears first, obviously and totally getting ready to die, I will in this intervening period go outside with my new books (Stewart O'Nan, Jim Shepard) and sit on the porch and read. For pleasure. And of my own choosing.

As soon as Phil stops leafblowing his front yard.