Drake Ness comes home with a piece of something bad

Usually people combing the beaches of Maine find pretty shells or sea-smoothed glass, but Drake finds a stone that taunts him with an inscrutable mystery. This shard is not how it should be. The ensuing confusion will make Drake grow up fast— but into what?

Matthew Atkinson opens his SHORT STORY collection, Final First

with "Shard," this weird little shimmering slice of magical realism obsidian that, like its namesake, is not what you think it is.