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[Fiction] A young boy plays with the truth as he skips school one day:

Your stepfather walks toward you. He takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger, and turns your face back and forth, as though it were a piece of merchandise he was thinking about buying.

“You must have fallen pretty easy,” he says. “When you faint, you go down hard. You don’t have any cuts.”

“Leopard.” — Wells Tower, New Yorker (2008)

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