By Holly Day

Here is a worm. It rustles through the dry leaves covering the ground, the thin desiccated bits of faded cellulose sticking to its damp skin as it passes. Its pink and red skin pulses brightly against the brown of the leaves, the black of the dirt, too shocking to be safe out in the open for long.

Photo by tomdz on Flickr

By Rory Douglas (@rorydoug)

It was on those June afternoons, in the weeks after the giant squid was dragged onto the sand, that my brother would drive us down the coast to Imperial Beach. If we talked at all it was about surf—a solid swell was lurking somewhere to the south of California, or so the reports said, but we didn’t know if it would hit Imperial Beach or pass it by for other breaks. My brother parked the car and I ran to check the surf from the rocks above the beach. That June the waves were always the same—waist to chest high, clean and buttery, rideable peaks scattered up and down the beach. The wind was onshore but light, and faded toward dusk. It wasn’t epic, but it was enough for my brother, and it was enough for me. We would’ve paddled out if IB had looked like Lake Michigan.

Photo by michaelroper on Flickr

After some time away gathering submissions, editing pieces and, quite honestly, doing things that have nothing to do with Recess, we’re ready to hit the summer months with a fresh swell of fiction and essays we’re dubbing the “Second Wave.” Expect a good mix of topics and a new handful of talented contributors to be scrolled past your eyeballs in the near future.

For the moment, however, we’d like to give one last hurrah to the fiction pieces published in the retroactively titled “First Wave” published earlier this year. Feast upon them, and then stay tuned for more great work next week.

By Matthew Brennan (@MatthewBrennan7)

Photo by joaquinuy on Flickr

All day, touring the city together, they meandered their way through the crowded, narrow streets and plazas, dodging storefronts and street-performers and vendors. When leading, he glanced back often to confirm that she was keeping up, staying with him through the crush of bodies; following her, he kept his eyes locked on the red flower he had tucked behind her ear that morning, at times finding routes through the crowd alternate to the one she’d slipped through, fighting his way back to her at others. But when she led, she took for granted that he would keep up behind her, not once glancing back.

By Brian Ross

Photo by Swami Stream on Flickr

By Matthew Brennan (@MatthewBrennan7)

Watercolor by Jeannie Beirne

With a saucepan set on top of the cast-iron stove, they boiled water over the wood-fueled flame for the father’s coffee and the boy’s hot chocolate. Outside – even from down in the basement – they could hear the wind, rushing through the trees and pressing against the walls of the house, the gusts whistling between the threshold gaps and rattling the windows, the sharp invasion of air making the house seem to move. With every change in the wind, heavy beads of rain broke like waves against the glass, and the deluge hummed a steady cadence on the roof that the father only noticed when it changed. The weathermen had said the hurricane would curl eastward before it came this far north; they’d said it would miss them.