Jodi Paloni
author of the short story collection They Could Live with Themselves; awarded Short Story America Prize and Independent Publishers Award Silver Medal; runner-up for the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and Raymond Carver Short Story Contest; finalist for the Maine Book Award and Maine Literary Award for Short Fiction; her stories have been anthologized in North by Northeast by Littoral Press and the Short Story America Anthology IV, and have appeared in Green Mountains Review, upstreet, Carve Magazine, Whitefish Review, Contrary Magazine, Prime Number, and elsewhere; holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts; writing workshop leader; on the planning committee for Brattleboro Literary Festival
an excerpt from “Deep End”
Too many kids bobbled and raced in the cloudy over-chlorinated water that Saturday afternoon for anyone to notice that Jillanna’s tiny brother, Elliot, had stumbled in over his head. The crush of swimmers included Jillanna, who, on most hot days, played Marco Polo until her eyes burned and her fingertips bled from hanging on the concrete lip of the pool. The lifeguard had climbed down from his stand to spritz Bactine on Jillanna’s puckered scrapes. Someone’s mother screamed.
Jillanna turned to see her friends humped and hanging on the side in the deep end, their shoulders pink from the high sun, their faces pale with horror. They reminded her of shrimp cocktail clinging to a bowl and she laughed at the image in her head, even when she knew that whatever was happening wasn’t funny.
from They Could Live With Themselves by Jodi Paloni (Press 53)
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