I have a student whose mother is a writer of flash fiction. She publishes widely in online journals and is a member of the school board. For a creative writing assignment, her son turns in a short short story that looks familiar to me. The fact that the punctuation is mostly correct also raises suspicions. After a cursory online search, I find the story. I make some minor corrections and a few comments and give it a D+. The son, who is a straight-A student, is sure to figure out I know what he did, but he can’t talk to me about it without admitting the plagiarism, and he can’t tell his mother that she made a D+ on her story.

last day of school
a wasp bangs on the window
to get out

Bio: Bob Lucky