The Sunshine State

"The Sunshine State," was selected by Short Édition in partnership with Temple University.

Our new house really felt like a home, with cockroaches and two pit bulls and a palm tree and a chain-link fence. On that first day, I heated up a can of kidney beans for breakfast and ate it sitting on the back stoop. Renton was smoking a cigarette; he couldn't stop smiling. The kidney beans tasted bland. The back yard had no grass, just sandy dirt and a pile of scrap wood and the dogs laying out in the sun. To me, it was perfect. Everything looked just like it was supposed to. We got a pumpkin for Halloween. We drove 40 minutes south of town to get it, at one of those u-pick places complete

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