#154: Visiting Artists

Consternation was brewing in the offices of Vice Principal Victoria Bryant. The ambitious young African-American administrator was seeing her dreams crumble before her eyes. Always upbeat Student Activities Director Ernie Penn Pierson, for whom “school spirit” was an unofficial middle name, was doing his best to cheer her up.

#151: Around the World

Volume VI: Starship Summer

A small group of kids assembled on the sidewalk to watch something they had never seen before. The tallest of the kids, a boy around ten or eleven, stood straddling a black, rugged-looking his old bike that looked like it might have been new in the 1950s. He was about ten or eleven, with greased-back longish hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses, corduroys that were too short, and a light blue cotton button down shirt—definitely out of style for 1985. His nose was too big for his longish face, and his mouth had too many teeth, out of which he tended to breathe as he watched through lenses that were too thick. His complexion made him look older than his age, as if it were already preparing for the pockmarks of severe acne to come.