travel
— A 13-year-old observes graduation season from a Manhattan hotel, watching anxious parents at breakfast and contemplating the hidden world awaiting both graduates and herself.
— A young visitor to Sobibór death camp touches the train tracks and imagines herself as a child searching for murdered parents.
— A young traveler contrasts swimming in the stormy Pacific and touching dead jellyfish with glimpses of urban decay seen from a bus window in a Chilean coastal city.
— On New Year's Eve in Pucón, local teenagers slaughter a lamb for tourists' supper while a volcano erupts, creating a moment of apocalyptic tension.
— A young poet traces Dostoevsky's footsteps through his former spaces, feeling his presence in stairs, doors, and pages as a white night falls on St. Petersburg.
— A girl visits her ancestors' graves in St. Petersburg, encountering a man who offers water to wash the stones, and wonders about the Russia she might have known.
— A nine-year-old city girl boards a fishing boat and watches Hyannis dissolve in the distance like a homeland she's never visited.
— A bored car ride to Cape Cod transforms when the window frames a night sky full of stars, glowing trees, and the canal that signals almost home.
— A robot travels the world—from beaches to northern lights to hailstorms—waiting for someone to call, revealing loneliness through its metal body and computer brain.
— A nine-year-old Jewish boy is smuggled from Warsaw to Switzerland inside a curtain during WWII, separated from his family but eventually finding hope through a letter confirming their safety.