Wrong Way

Kids say it’s fun to take cars. They brag to each other about how many they’ve stolen and the sleekest models they’ve sped away in. They say they are bored and that it’s easy, sharing videos of themselves driving at 120 miles per hour. They smile with key fobs, offering rides on Facebook. But all of the biggest car thieves had something to run from.

Fiction Pick of the Week: "Stick Shift"

A girl's interaction before her Coming Out dance.

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"I had no idea about myself, whether I was pretty or different or what. That I had not yet attracted a boyfriend was a failure that weighed on my mind. If I was pretty, I figured, I would have one already. But if I was different, a fresh idea for me, that would explain the problem, for I thought that boys didn’t like girls who weren’t the same as every other girl they knew. I didn’t play varsity sports and look like it, and I wasn’t fey, I didn’t play an instrument or go in for the arts. I was smart, though. “Boys are intimidated by your intellect,” my married sister once told me, meaning it as a compliment. But I didn’t act nearly as smart as I was, so I couldn’t believe that was true."