Book excerpt: In 'Dance of Heartbreak', something happened to a young boy in Grade 4, at Red Flag Elementary School; but even today the whole affair remains fresh in his mind. He'd never met another girl like her; she was a little child of glass, beautiful in her sorrow when she ran to centre stage. For him, she was an archetype. In 'The Diary for August', the inspector looked at the suspect who had been brought in for the incident at the city wall. He was fourteen or fifteen, dripping wet from the swimming pool where they had found him, and both his legs were trembling. It looked like he knew he had caused a disaster. Part of the Storycuts series, these two short stories were previously published in the collection Madwoman on the Bridge.