Fiction | December 10, 2012
The Numbers Man
Michael Byers
Instead of setting his alarm Paul Lake decided to stay up all night. He was fifteen and had stayed up all night twice before for no reason, daring himself, mostly, and he decided to do it again because he did not want to miss Emily, who was coming to pick him up at five o’clock the next morning. Emily was twenty-five. She was his step-aunt—the sister of his father’s new wife. His father’s new wife, Barbara Lewis, was thirty-five. His father was forty-five. Though Paul mostly disliked his stepmother, this tidily ascending numerical ziggurat pleased him, his father on the top step and himself on the bottom and the two women set between them.
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