Was the “told us he had cancer” bit supposed to be a little funny, or am I a terrible person?

I’d find a replacement for “challenge”. I don’t think there’s really a fitting synonym except for “dare” (which wouldn’t really work either, since it’s already used so much), so you might want to go with something a little different.

The fragments in the penultimate paragraph make it feel a little disjointed. I trust that was intentional.

The quote in the third paragraph feels a bit broken off from the rest. It could use a bit of a transition, I think.

These stylistic quibbles are pretty minor, and I loved the characters, plot, humor, and mood. It was pretty light throughout, a bit of dark humor in the first half, more half-recalled nostalgia by the end. A happy story about death is hard, but I think you’ve done it.

I appreciate the kind words. You were right about “challenged,” and I never really liked that word choice to begin with, so fixed it in the subsequent draft. Thanks for reading!

The edit changes the mood of the sentence a great deal, but it’s not any worse for it and it fits the flow a lot better.

Would that we could all live as Nick does, with the hand of death on one shoulder and the hand of a beautiful girl around our throats

loved the story

What they said

(Worst review ever – let me try again)

I think you’ve created a story with a realistic treatment of death, or rather, life in death’s presence. Which is incredibly difficult even without a character limit.

Nice story. Wanna bang?

You pack a ridiculous amount of story into the tiniest conveyance.

Basically I’m calling you dense.

Best compliment I can give it is that it has the ring of truth about it. And whether any of it the specifics are or not, it’s sad and real.

I like the fact that the only tag is ‘youth’ as well; sometimes they are part of the effect of a piece.

I believe specificity makes for better stories, so details like Popov and an traffic cone and a dimebag stand out to me as successes in storytelling.

This story also had that funny/sad mix that makes so many “This American Life” segments work.

I’m impressed.

This is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy most.