At The Crest
At The Crest is a humorous meditation on defining a place among your peers. It originally appeared in a collection of short stories called Street Ends No Outlet. At the Crest is centered around a boy named Marvin Milstead growing up in the early 1970s being raised by a single mother with contemporary values and his grandparents with older values. This character was first introduced in Idle Essence -tales of Marvin. He is now a 5th grader who desperately wants to make a transition from an ordinary face in the crowd to a cool kid who hangs out at the local cinema on Friday nights. Could there be a shortcut? Maybe he could ditch his younger friends in the neighborhood who still believe girls have Cooties and associate himself with the tough kid at school. The one who smokes cigarettes in the bathroom. And what about that cute new girl in class?Â