Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

Where in every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

So y'all, each and every one of the stories that ends up on the podcast is because the

story has resonated with me and some of them take a while to percolate.

I'll read them and I'll put them down, I'll forget about them, I'll come back six months

later and read it again and it's like being struck by lightning.

This story worked differently for me and I'll talk more about why that is at the end.

It's by the author Nancy Cress who has one of those mind-boggling kinds of careers where

the credits go on and on and you're wondering like, wait, how did one person accomplish

all of this?

She's the author of 33 books including 26 novels, four collections of short stories and

three books on writing.

Her work is one six nebulous, two hugos, a sturgeon and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award

and her work's been translated into two dozen languages including, wait for it,

cling on.

This piece comes from her collection entitled Fountain of Age and it also appears in the

best of Nancy Cress.

Now Nancy describes this as a horror story.

It's the tale of two classmates, both kind of oddballs but in different ways.

They have some of the same interests in common as kids and that kind of draws them together

despite their differences and they keep gravitating to each other over the course of their adult

...