“Now you’ll never marry my son!” my mother-in-law laughed, setting my wedding dress on fire. I wiped my tears, smiled coldly, and said, “Enjoy destroying that dress, because the wedding was never the real trap.” Her face went completely pale when I made one quick phone call…

a traveling circus act,” I finally said, my voice steadying. “But I think I want to be a cartographer. If we survived the blast radius, maybe we owe it to them to draw the map.”

We returned to a Cleveland that felt distinctly altered. The autumn air was crisp, smelling of wet asphalt and ambition. The digital noise had subsided from a roar to a persistent continue reading …