Alex plays with sis and her friends on a snow day.

(from The Withdrawal Method)

This wasn’t the funny, freaky Saunders-ian ramp the back of the book promises (perhaps another selection from the collection) but it was a sharp little story about being young and dumb. I particularly bought Alex, whose adolescent brain doesn’t know when a joke is over, and takes things too far, and wants to belong.
Here‘s another writeup about this story. Tells you a lot of the plot, but as somebody who’s already read the story, I dug it. Here’s a fan-blog about Pasha Malla.