My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie I would sit up late and watch videos of whales giving birth. Marco liked to find all of the glitches in video games. Shannon had a penchant for building action figures out of spoons and sticky hands and naming all of them Joseph. We all had our bizarre hobbies at the Slop House - which is what we called our townhouse just on the corner of downtown and the Tenderloin. When Oscar arrived as the fourth roommate, however, he said something that was very confusing. "I like running on a treadmill once in a while," he told me and my roommates over glasses of very watered down absinthe. "Can I have a treadmill in the living room?" We weren't sure what to think of it. The living room was Marco's space for all of his N64 and Playstation needs. Not to mention that the music Oscar liked to listen to was predominantly smooth jazz piano - which sounded way too melodic over the harsh shrieks of a bugging out Koopa on the NES. If he was going to...

Hannah finished the test with stunning accuracy, even though she took considerably more time than her classmates did. Still, she managed to turn the paper in right before the bell rang. She ignored the sneer of her teacher as he accepted her scribbles, equations, and notes. She ignored the stares from her peers as they waited outside for her, as if growing impatient of her own troubles. She didn't let any of that get to her. And when the A was delivered to her begrudgingly in the next week, she understood that it was worth the looks.