This is The Author's Voice, New Fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Author's Voice, we'll hear John Lurra read his story three short moments in a long life from the May 9th, 2016 issue of the magazine.

Leroux is the author of 20 books, including the novels The Miracle and the Medici Boy.

His first story in The New Yorker was published in 1980.

Now here's John Lerre.

Three short moments in a long life. One, three short moments in a long life. One, the spy.

Beverly LaPlante and I were second graders at New Carrou Street School, and we both hated recess.

She hated recess and she cried the whole time, and nobody knew why, so everybody made fun of her.

I hated recess because it wasn't really school, and we weren't learning anything.

It was a waste of time.

I knew Beverly only by name and by what I could tell from spying on her.

Her last name was the plant, which was strange and therefore wrong, and she was

famous for being a crybaby. She was not even pretty. Her crying all the time frightened me,

so I never spoke to her. Besides, I didn't want anybody to think I was her friend. She didn't belong,

and secretly, I feared I didn't belong. The nice thing about Beverly

LaPlante was that she disappeared sometime that winter. One day Miss Williams was taking attendance,

and after a little pause, she skipped over Beverly's name. We all looked at where she was supposed to be sitting, and her seat was empty.

I remember thinking, yes, good.

She didn't belong, and now she's gone.

I wondered if she was crying in her new place, wherever that was.

I wondered how she had managed to disappear, or if it was something her mother and father

...