I’m so happy that my short story “Buster” won the Editors’ Prize at Meridian: the Semi-Annual Journal from the University of Virginia! Here’s the first paragraph.

“The year my twin and I turned eight, we decided to kill our neighbor’s cat. Buster was an enormous marmalade and, a couple times a week, he left the heads of decapitated songbirds in our front yard. He belonged to the girl across the street: Liza Parker. Liza was in our grade but not our class. She wore button-up dresses every day and had her mother drive her to school each morning because she thought the bus was too dirty. When we saw her outside her house, she’d turn around and go inside, or, if Buster was there, she’d bend over and pet him and whisper, “Dirty orphans,” in a singsong voice that we could hear from the opposite sidewalk where we stood.”

Read the rest of the story  in Meridian’s May issue, which will be available in print and online!