Suzanne Grove

Suzanne Grove is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and received the J. Stanton Carson Grant for Excellence in Writing while studying at Robert Morris University. Her poetry and fiction appear in The Adirondack Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Okay Donkey, The Penn Review, Porter House Review, Raleigh Review, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux’s Work in Progress website, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the short fiction editor for CRAFT literary magazine. You can find her @SuzanneGrove and www.SuzanneGrove.com.

DARLING by Suzanne Grove

We were fifteen, our bodies slick with baby oil, as we tanned on her lawn in old beach chairs rusting at the edges. I was pouring flavored sugar down my throat when Julia told me the devil seduced my parents. The candy’s raspberry tang hit my soft palate, and I coughed a fine blue dust that tasted like medicine. I knew her parents were evangelicals or born again or fundamentalists, all words I could say but didn’t understand. Her father wore jeans to church. The faded denim Wranglers rode high up his waist and tugged at his crotch.  His leather…

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