A resident of Palo Alto, California, Kevin Sharp has established a reputation as a lyrical writer of fiction, based on works such as his novel, After Dakota. Kevin Sharp has also published a number of shorter works on sites such as Fiction Attic, including the 2016 piece “The Place I Belong.”
Beginning with the sentence “My life changed when I turned seven,” the Palo Alto author writes of a boy who lives with his single mom in a Flagstaff, Arizona, mobile home and wishes each birthday for a full-scale Batmobile and for his father to return home. His mother has a number of dates, but the boy never fully approves of them and lacks a male role model in his life.
This all changes when the boy’s mom starts taking her dates to the trailer for dinner and the boy has regular awkward exchanges with the men, which are best summed up in the phrase, “It was nice meeting you. Sort of.” Everything changes again on a momentous day when the boy receives a call from his distantly remembered father from a phone booth.
