Gabriela was from Mobile, Alabama, where Leon’s grandfather was born. They bonded over the seafood, Leon saying he had always wanted to go to learn about his roots, Gabriela laughing at the thought of this sheltered kid from Santa Monica driving down the narrow highway by the Gulf with some curated blues playlist blasting through his dad’s puke green Prius.

The L-shaped room Abedi slept in with his mother smelled like human habits: faint traces of last night’s oud, clean panties air-drying after being washed in the sink, the sickly sweet scent of pink bottle hair cream.

Alefes Silva was born in 1981 in Colombia and lives in Bogota. This illustrator started his work experimentally and he was used to drawing on the margins of books and on small papers every day and everywhere. This experience led him to choose pencil illustration as his main technique.

Danielle had heard that the girl Nadine was prone to fainting spells. She didn’t understand until an incident occurred in her own class, while she was teaching a grammar lesson and trying to corral the attention of sixteen eighth graders with a game.

The resemblance was uncanny, really. The same bushy eyebrows. That wattle at the throat. Those teeth stained brown, lodged like pebbles in his gums. She was nine-ish on her wedding day, nine-ish years old when she saw him through the veil.