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Realistic Contemporary Fiction: Short StoriesExample #1A Moment in the Sun FieldBy William BrohaughDeep into the summer and not too long after Bobby Hansen's twelfth birthday, after on of Bobby's mom's hamburger suppers, Mike Pasqui came over to Bobby's house and the two of them talked Bobby's dad into playing some 500 with them. Dad grumbled a little—he always did that—but he grabbed the bat and ball from the back porch and headed for the back yard with Mytzi, Bobby's muttzy dog, yapping behind—and he always did that, too.Mike and Bobby took the field first, and Dad hit balls to them. A caught fly ball earned Bobby 100 points. A grounder played on one bounce earned Mike 75. A flubbed grounder—a two bouncer—stole 50 points back from Mike. And on it went into the evening. When one of the players earned 500 points, he took the bat until someone else got 500. Mike didn't do much batting, which was okay with him. He just liked being a part of the game. And since Dad preferred to bat, after a while he decided to do all the batting no matter who scored how many points. And that was okay with everyone, too.Pretty soon, Bobby had 1,075 points, and Mike had around 300 (he had stopped counting), and Dad was swinging and smacking the ball and even joking around a little bit.It wasn't too long and the shadow of the house slid up on Dad, slid over him, and stretched for the horizon, which it would reach, Bobby knew, the moment the sun disappeared below the opposite horizon. It would be a shadow hundreds of miles long, millions of miles long, and Bobby sometimes wondered if that was what night really was, all the shadows of all the houses and all the dads and all the kids playing 500 stretched out and added together.Dad tossed the ball into the air in front of him and popped a fly out of the shadow and into the sunlight. The sun splashed onto one side of the ball, splashed it cool and white against the cool and darkening sky. The ball spun, and began to fall, and Bobby positioned himself under it, held his glove out not for a whole ball, but just a piece of one, because it looked just like a piece of one, a slice of ball, the splice splashed extra white in the high sunlight.Bobby waited for that little bit of ball to come down, and suddenly he understood the moon.Realistic Contemporary Fiction: Short StoriesExample #2SleepingBy Katharine WeberShe would not have to change a diaper, they said. In fact, she would not have to do anything at all. Mrs. Winter said that Charles would not wake while she and Mr. Winter were out at the movies. He was a very sound sleeper, she said. No need to have a bottle for him or anything. Before the Winters left they said absolutely please not to look in on the sleeping baby because the door squeaked too loudly.Harriet had never held a baby, except for one brief moment, when she was about six, when Mrs. Antler next door had surprisingly bestowed on her the tight little bundle that was their new baby, Andrea. Harriet had sat very still and her arms had begun to ache from the tension by the time Mrs. Antler took back her baby. Andy was now a plump seven-year-old, older than Harriet had been when she held her that day.After two hours of reading all of the boring mail piled neatly on a desk in the bedroom and looking through a depressing wedding album filled with photographs of dressed-up people in desperate need of orthodonture (Harriet had just ended two years in braces and was very conscious of malocclusion issues) while flipping channels on their television, Harriet turned the knob on the baby's door very tentatively, but it seemed locked. She didn’t dare turn the knob with more pressure because what if she made a noise and woke him and he started to cry?She stood outside the door and tried to hear the sound of a baby breathing but she couldn’t hear anything through the door but the sound of the occasional car that passed by on the street outside. She wondered what Charles looked like. She wasn’t even sure how old he was. Why had she agreed to baby-sit when Mr. Winter approached her at the swim club? She had never seen him before, and it was flattering that he took her for being capable, as if just being a girl her age automatically qualified her as a baby-sitter.By the time the Winters came home, Harriet had eaten most of the M & M's in the glass bowl on their coffee table: first all the blue ones, then the red ones, then all the green ones, and so on, leaving, in the end, only the yellow.They gave her too much money and didn’t ask her about anything. Mrs. Winter seemed to be waiting for her to leave before checking on the baby. Mr. Winter drove her home in silence. When they reached her house he said, My wife. He hesitated, then he said, You understand, don't you? and Harriet answered Yes without looking at him or being sure what they were talking about although she did really know what he was telling her and then she got out of his car and watched him drive away.Realistic Contemporary Fiction: Short StoriesExample #3Elevenby Sandra Cisneros What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth. “Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.” “Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.” “It has to belong to somebody, ”Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so. Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. “That’s not, I don’t, you’re not…Not mine.” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four. “Of course it’s yours, ”Mrs. Price says. “ I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not. Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you. But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine. In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough, ”because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care. “Rachel, ”Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.” “But it’s not –“ “Now!” Mrs. Price says. This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine. That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast. But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers. I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay. Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight and when Papa comes home from work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late. I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven. Because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny—tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.Realistic Contemporary Fiction: Short StoriesExample #4Amerika StreetBy Lili PotparaIt’s been quiet in the apartment for a week with Daddy and Mama not talking. Today, they are both working and the girl has been alone, playing a game where she talks to herself, asking questions and answering them in a different voice. Mama comes home early and calls, “Alenka, come into the kitchen.”Alenka apologizes to her toys and tells them she’ll be back quickly.“Alenka, I have to tell you something,” says Mama.She has that look that scares Alenka, as if it were drawn on the wrong face.“Daddy got you a birthday surprise,” she says. “A bike. One of those Rog Pony folding bicycles.”Alenka doesn’t say anything, but something makes her heart tighten, and she’s angry. She’ll be eleven years old soon, not a child anymore. Of course she wants a Pony. She’s wanted a Pony for a long time, so that she can go with Silva and Katarina to “Amerika,” a little side street. It’s been too far away for her, without a bike. They talk so much about it, how the slopes are steep, and how you have to brake hard at the bottom, that she wishes that they’d talk about something else.Mama continues with that look, the one drawn on the wrong face, “Alenka, you should look happy because Daddy even took out a loan to buy it.”’She says, “Yes, Mama,” and goes back to the window and her toys, “I’m going to get a bicycle as a surprise,” she tells them, and the toys bounce up and down.When her birthday arrives, Alenka has a tummy ache. Still, she goes to school, and in class she wonders whether the bike is red or blue. All the Ponies are blue or red, only Silva’s is pink because her daddy painted it.At home Daddy arrives after lunch and tells her to come down to the basement. Alenka goes down and the bike is there. Light blue.She glances at her father. She knows that she’s supposed to be happy, but her tummy starts to hurt more. She touches the bike. It’s just right—the metal so cold it slightly hurts.“Thank you, Daddy,” she says and wants to go upstairs to her toys as soon as possible.“You’re not going to go for a ride?” he asks.“Yeah,” Alenka says, not knowing what to do. “In a little while.”The basement is narrow and the light is poor; Daddy is big and Alenka is small. She can’t move. In her head, she hears the word “loan.” She wishes Daddy would leave, so Silva and Katarina can come, so she can escape to Amerika. ................
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