Excerpt from Some Go Home by Odie Lindsey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She was gonna what? No matter how often she thought of the future, there was no clarity or specific as to how it would ripen. Rather, Colleen was driven by a shapeless, consuming lack. Made sick by a yearning for some new form of exceptionalism, a feeling that even her pregnancy had failed to quash.

She'd been exceptional, before. Her lungs had ventilated a rich mix of shamal dust storm and South Korean cigs, diesel exhaust and latrine, and toxic, burn pit shit. She'd seen a dead woman laid out on the hydraulic ramp of a Bradley vehicle in a city defined by wailing, foreign gibberish. Her own body had been weaponized, wrapped in MOPP gear and Kevlar and pixelated camo—and it had been combatively unwrapped, too. Exceptional was very, very possible.

Someone knocked on the kitchen door. She hoisted herself up, then waddled over to answer, mumbling, "Jesus Christ," and "Cathead, my ass." The diamond-shaped door window was filled with tendrils of brown hair.

"Hey," Colleen said, beckoning her best friend inside, before turning away to the coffeepot.

"Must be nice to sleep all day," Deana said.

"I wasn't sleeping. I was layin' around."

Deana took a long look at Colleen's belly. "A-round is right. Land sakes!"

"Don't even start," Colleen said. "It's hot. My bod's exploding. And I didn't sleep a wink."

"Cry me a Gulf, sister." Deana winked. "Oh hell, did you hear 'bout that missing pilot? The small plane that's gone down in the pines near Holly Springs? They can't find it anywhere. Just heard the distress call for help, and then, boop!—nada."

"Sounds about right," Colleen said. "Person tries to flee this place, and even the trees lock 'em down."

Deana grabbed a mug of coffee, then sat down in a wooden kitchen chair. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse to let the air sweep her chest. "My word, get a breeze goin'."

Colleen glared, but then turned on the box fan. She pulled a pack of Mistys from her robe pocket, offering one to Deana.

Deana waved the cig away. "For the record, the pilot wasn't trying to leave Mississippi. He was flyin' in."

Colleen huffed in disgust, then lit the smoke.

"Listen, girlfriend. I'm not gonna spend my lunch hour buckin' you up. You invited me over. So you tell me something good." Deana snatched the cig from Colleen's fingers. "I know there's a lump of sugar under all that salt."

"What'd you bring me to read?" Colleen replied, taking the cigarette back.

Deana laughed, then pulled a bundle of magazines from her purse: Vogue, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, and the like, dated castoffs from the beauty parlor where she worked.

Colleen started thumbing a copy of Us Weekly and pointed to a spread of starlets on a red carpet. "She's hot."

"Damn straight. Check those legs," Deana said. "But lord, that's an ugly dress."

"Valentino, though," Colleen countered.

"Valentin-No is more like it. That outfit's a felony."

They continued like this over corn salad and sun tea, with Colleen dog-earing any image that made her feel jealous, or inspired, or depressed. Half an hour or so later, an alarm chimed on Deana's phone.

"That's the bell, kid," she said. "Gotta go."

Colleen ignored her and flipped another page.

"I realize that moodiness comes with the hormones," Deana said. "But if I wanted an hour full of mope, I'd go see my husband!"

Colleen glanced up. "You promised it'd get better."

"I still do. You're just feelin' cagey." Deana rapped on the table, then stood up. "As soon as those babies get here, it'll be like your heart's outside your body. Exposed. Alive. Devastated by love. You won't have another want on the planet."

"Right," Colleen said.

Deana helped Colleen to her feet, then beckoned a goodbye hug. Breasts and bellies, their breathing syncopated, things got woozy and still, and safe. Deana ran her chin against Colleen's neck, taking in the scent of that cocoa butter lotion. As their fingers flared on each other's backs, the kitchen fell silent enough to broadcast Colleen's swallow.

Excerpted from Some Go Home: A Novel. Copyright (c) 2020 by Odie Lindsey. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.