Kyler Doss

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.

Uptight high school boy faces two problems: 1) find a boyfriend; 2) keep it secret if you actually do. The coming dance in this overseas American school, a place stuck in the Arabian desert, will spin everything toward the real and the possible. But people love to gossip and Tim can't stand it when they do - he is going to have to get used to it or else forget about the whole thing.

A serious boy gets sidetracked by the draw of other boys - when he is supposed to be competing as a high school preacher. As talented a preacher as Micah is, he is sick of it. He finds more than he can handle when he chases something exciting on the Left Coast, something everybody back home will tell him is immoral.

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?

When the last inning of the last game is over, you normally pick up your stuff in the dugout and go home. Sandy is a 14-year-old boy minding his own business - another season at first base - when the center fielder wants him to go with him for food. Sandy must not have heard the after-game plan, that the whole team is going there - unless he just got asked out on a date.

Impossible love drives a boy off for a school that trains priests - where he meets a boy he can't turn away from. With a little luck, no one will uncover how Ian feels - including the boy he loves. Ian hides the truth from himself, too, but the problem hounds him - what do you do when you find the Midwestern boy that you weren't supposed to find?

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.

It's the year of boy-girl parties, the year when they give school dances and you know what is expected of you. Kalhoun tries really hard not to like the boy that he likes in art class, he will write letters to him explaining why he can't like him in this year when the rules get serious, the 7th grade. He won't send the letters, of course, letters that say way too much for the U.S. Mail.

A would-be lover boy can't tell the new boy how much he likes him - it's just easier to be unhappy. Sam skulks across the sidewalks of this hush-hush town, where he also holds out on his best friend - not a hint of the secret. The new boy flits around somewhere out there and Sam feels lost, unable to come clean - unless your best friend is the one that you're supposed to tell this stuff to.

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.