A Village, a Vamp, and a Muddied Soul
I pedaled faster, away from my stepfather’s El Patio Restaurant, darting a glance over my shoulder. My fingers clenched the money pouch with three hundred and six dollars against the handle bar. Two p.m. sun cooked my scalp and shoulders. I pumped harder, my progress...
Mary Jane, The Catholic Church , and Me
I climbed into the back seat of Reid Ferr’s GTO behind St. Joe’s, the fifth kid in. Catholic Youth Organization had just let out. I thumbed through my brand new paperback copy of Good News for Modern Man. Before we’d gone a block, Joey Ent, sitting shotgun, lit a...
Fresca, the County Fair, and the Truth
I climbed out of Mom’s Plymouth Duster into the halo of light circling the Martin County Fair and weaved through the parked cars into the clutch of my friends. The metallic clacking and whirring of amusement rides buzzed excitement through the Florida fall night....
The Wheels of the Swim Team Bus Go Round and Round
Amy Kuhns and I sidled up the swim team bus aisle past the upturned noses of the chlorine-silvered blondes, the fastest girls on the team, toward our usual spot in the middle. We could take ten seconds off our 100 Free times and still not blip onto their radar....
Freedom Doesn’t Come for Free
Mom scooped us from the sailboat we lived aboard in Miami, grabbed a new husband, and tossed us into a new town. I landed on cat feet in Stuart, Florida, because I wanted freedom from Dad and our life on the Annie Lee almost as much as Mom did. But freedom came at a...
Bridge Jumping and Junk Pile Regrets
I peered over the side of Cato’s Bridge where Aida Gale and had jumped off seconds ago. Fear fluttered in my chest. My toes gripped the edge of the concrete girder, my hand super-glued to the guardrail. Kelly Gaston hopped over the rail and glanced at me. “You’re such...
A Bus, A Boy, and a Bestie
I eyed delicious, and definitely off the market, Danny Pignato across the school bus bench. The bedlam around me faded like I’d landed in a movie. The hour between Stuart Middle School and Jupiter was a long time to avoid all that cuteness. Too long, it turned out....
Kickball, Kicked in the Pants, and Kicking Back
In November Mom married my stepdad. In December we moved a hundred miles up the east coast from Miami. In January I transferred into Stuart Middle School in the middle of eighth grade. I thought I might be due a little peace—not the fight that broke out my first day...
Dogleg Jogs Come in Threes
The plane set down on the Miami International Airport tarmac. Brakes grabbed below my feet, tamping down our speed. White bulbs winked along the asphalt as the plane hurled forward. But there were no taxiway lights for the sharp turn my life was about to take....
The Summer My Dream Came True
My heart thumped faster as the guy in the Our Lady of the Hills Camp T-shirt rounded the van onto a tree-canopied dirt road. My folks’ divorce last year had ushered in TV, telephone, and air conditioning. Now my dream of going to boarding school—even if it was only...
Skating Into A Kiss
I'm a thirteen-year-old roller rink rat in Miami, Florida, careening around the oval with all the coolness a Catholic school seventh grader could scrape up. I was fast and zit-free, and it was going to be a good day. I whizzed past Steven, a spindly, freckled kid with...
Hung Up on the House Church
Growing up Catholic, I would have lumped attending a house church with selling flowers for the Hare Krishna. But that was before I fell in love with Jesus, married a church-planting pastor, and traipsed after him, attending church in elementary schools, a community...
A Gift of Truth
July, 18, 2016, Ashland OH—My eyes traced the gold and maroon geometric pattern on the carpet of Ashland University’s John C. Myers Convocation Center. I’d attended the annual National Conference of the Brethren Church for over 35 years and I was focused on slipping...
Ashes
Mom shuffled along the pier stretching into the St. Lucie River beside her lifelong friend Reene Zeigler. I trailed behind, bright sun, a stiff November breeze, and memories of this sandy town where I’d lived during eighth, ninth, and tenth grades distracting me from...
Boat Daze
I stare out the window of my Phoenix home office at gardenias like the ones that grew in our Miami yard where Dad built the Annie Lee. And I wonder if his naming the boat after me had been a grand gesture of his love for me. The Annie Lee was a dream Dad wrangled to...
About Ann
Ann Lee Miller holds a BA and MFA in creative writing. She teaches writing online for Grand Canyon University. She’s lived in Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, and Oregon but left her heart in Florida where she grew up. Over 100,000 copies of her novels have been downloaded from Amazon. She is hard at work on a memoir-novel about growing up on a sailboat. When she’s not embroiled in a crisis–real or imagined–you’ll find her hiking with her husband or meddling in her kids’ lives.
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