Kyler Doss

The new boy crashes the school's-out party of mid-June, where he feels the suspicious eyes of the 6th-grade boys upon him. Steen is afraid to talk to them but wants so bad for them to like him. Football, basketball, track & field - the playground sports throw him into a must-win situation: he either comes up big on a field day under a big American flag or else nobody wants you, not one other boy.

From the steps of a moving train, a socially unskilled Dutch boy makes a friend on the platform. The first-time-ever connection stays with him. It means more to him than he can know, that he has joined the battle of his own emotional distance - just by being there one afternoon in Amsterdam, just by meeting a boy he won't forget.

The things you would never say - those are the things one boy decides to sling unguarded when his emotions have blown up on him. Rusty picks a boy on the uncaring sidewalks of November to unload his feelings on, all his frustration over boys that don't like him back. The boy he calls out is going to get a full dose of just how broken Rusty is.

Falling for a 6th-grade boy when you're only a 5th-grade boy puts you on real shaky ground. But Chip has to find a way to get to him - he's got 60 seconds every morning if the two of them could start walking the wall together. Then it would come down to putting it on the line - how do you touch him or say something that will let him know how you feel?

If one boy in these stories finds another boy to love, that's a bonus - because it's not a guarantee. The boys already have to deal with the uneasy fate of life after high school, the uncharted route they didn't see coming. Love only adds to the freight in these 4 novellas: I'm Not From Here, Your Nihilistic Tea House, If by Chance We Meet, A Particular Friendship.

A downcast hick boy finds himself powerfully drawn to the kid he rescued in the pond last fall - the problem is, he hasn't seen the boy since. With the coming of the Fourth of July, the bone-dry pond makes it look like he never will. Neil has to somehow find him on this desolate American landscape, and then he needs to take him back to water if he does.

A 21-year-old guy goes in search of a better ending for his story, an ending that never comes. You can't change a story that's already done but he can't stop thinking about it. Things ended badly with the stranger he met in Salt Lake City and he searches for a way to change the past or find out what exactly happened between the two of them - because it kills him the handsome stranger got away.

A good boy is off to a bad start in college, where he can't get to know anyone - he worries this is all going to turn out like high school did. He has changed his nickname since then to his more adult name, but he never remembers to use it; it just isn't him. One day in philosophy class, a boy that arrives late apparently has to take the first open chair, which is the one next to Kippie.

A high school boy gets the idea that it's time to tell his best friend who he likes, which is boys. He's been putting it off for a long time and there is still no reason to do it - it could send things spinning out of control if his friend gets all weirded out. Chase doesn't know why he needs to do it - he just does, even if it costs him a friendship that has gotten close since freshman science.

Jude takes on the gossips and the flirts of his 8th-grade class; they try and make it their business to get in the middle of the relationship he's got with the boy that he likes. The shouting matches he has with them, where he patiently tries to explain that it is none of their business, often take place in the middle of class. That will get him sent to the vice principal's office every time.