Why They Run the Way They Do

by Susan Perabo

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my brilliant editor and friend, Marysue Rucci, for sticking with me. I could not ask for a smarter reader, a more patient editor, or a more enthusiastic cheerleader. And thanks to the rest of the team at Simon & Schuster, especially the talented and unflappable duo of Elizabeth Breeden and Laura Regan.

  Immense thanks goes to my BFF&N Mary Beth Berger Baken, who has been my most thoughtful reader and my lifelong pen pal, beginning when we lived next door to each other.

  Thanks also to Randolph Thomas and Brad Barkley and Marion Winik for their consistent good advice and unwillingness to let me get away with much.

  Thanks to my friends and colleagues at Dickinson College for their support, and a most enthusiastic shout-out to my amazing students, past and present, who are a constant source of information and inspiration.

  Thanks to Betsy Perabo for her seemingly effortless expertise as sister and friend and reader. And to my parents who continue to inspire me as a parent and teacher and writer.

  Thanks and love to my amazing children for giving me the two best excuses in the world for taking fifteen years to write this book. And to Sha’an Chilson for giving me a million reasons to get up from my desk and a million reasons to go back to it. Do I know how lucky I am? I do. I do. I do.

  Finally, always, thanks to my beloved teachers and classmates at the University of Arkansas, many of whose hands will never touch these pages, but whose wisdom and humanity has touched all these words.

  Want more from Susan Perabo? Read her first story collection Who I Was Supposed to Be and novel The Broken Places.

  A remarkable collection of insidiously hilarious stories in the tradition of Lorrie Moore celebrating the absence of normalcy and everyday deviance of the “ordinary” man and woman.

  Who I Was Supposed to Be

  * * *

  A powerful and poignant debut novel about a family of firefighters that explores the precarious terrain of honor and duty.

  The Broken Places

  * * *

  ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!

  © SHA’AN CHILSON

  SUSAN PERABO is Writer in Residence and Professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Who I Was Supposed to Be, and a novel, The Broken Places. Her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has appeared in numerous magazines, including One Story, Glimmer Train, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, and The Sun.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Susan-Perabo

  ALSO BY SUSAN PERABO

  * * *

  The Broken Places

  Who I Was Supposed to Be

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  New stories and compilation copyright © 2016 by Susan Perabo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2016

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

  Jacket design by Alison Forner

  Images of silhouette © Masyle/Shutterstock; © Kristina Velickovic/Getty Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Perabo, Susan, 1969–

  [Short stories. Selections]

  Why they run the way they do : stories / Susan Perabo.—First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

  pages ; cm

  I. Title.

  PS3566.E673A6 2016

  813'.54—dc23

  2015025570

  ISBN 978-1-4767-6143-5

  ISBN 978-1-4767-6145-9 (ebook)