Happy to share our second-place winner in the Mystery and Memory Contest, from Mary Collins

In the Looney Tunes cartoons of the seventies, Wile E. Coyote runs out of road and hurtles headlong over cliffs, legs pedaling hilariously in mid-air. Sylvester the cat, flattened by a steamroller, peels himself off the road, shakes himself out, and gets back to pursuing Tweetie Pie.

How we laugh.

I am eleven when I almost kill my brother. It is summer vacation and, bored, we make a game of bounding from one end of our long hallway to the half-glazed front door at the other in fewer than ten leaps. Daniel is a year older than I, his wiry legs longer. I am stationed beside the door counting aloud his scissoring strides when a magnificent vision comes to me: If I open the door he’ll continue, Wile E-style, out into the air beyond…