Sis and I are going to do One Teen Story Boot Camp later this month, so I decided to explore the Y.A. (Young Adult) category to prepare. Free Y.A. stories are hard to come by. What characterizes Y.A.? A teenage protagonist. Who writes Y.A.? Established writers and budding teenage novelists. Who reads Y.A.? The target audience is young people, 12-18, but well written Y.A. transcends age and is enjoyed by all.

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“Giovanni’s Farewell,” by Claudia Gray, Enthralled; Paranormal Diversions, edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

The paranormal is a popular Y.A. genre. In this story, a twin brother and sister each have a supernatural power—he can read minds, she sees dead people. Discovering and coming to terms with their situation is not unlike suffering through puberty and coming out safely on the other side.

“This Serious Moonlight,” by Richard Larson, Scapezine.com

Stories that present drug use as a routine part of a teen’s day upset me. Add to that the drinking and gay sex peripheral to the werewolf mayhem and this boy’s life is dark indeed. There is a serious message buried here, though. His mother says,

I thought maybe we could change—that we could transform into anything we wanted to be. Eventually, though, your turn into one thing and then you stay like that, no matter what you plan for.

The boy discovers that there is such a thing as a curse. Good to know. 

• “The Rememberer,” by Aimee Bender, The Missouri Review

Not Y.A., but older teens would get it. A man literally deconstructs in front of his girlfriend and becomes a microorganism. Speculative, flash fiction (wonderfully appropriate to the subject), Bender has the ability to make complex ideas visual and clear. This story shocks, like a cold dip after the hot tub.

• “Matchless,” by Gregory Maguire, NPR.org

Reinventing a popular tale is a common Y.A. technique. Think fan fiction, where you use literary characters in a story of your own. NPR commissioned Maguire to write this Christmas story that gives The Little Match Girl a different context and makes her peripheral but key to the happiness of another child. All things work together for good in Maguire’s version.

• “The Water is Wide,” The Unreal and the Real, Volume One by Ursula K. Le Guin

The matchless Le Guin riffs on a James Taylor ballad in an exploration of becoming one in love and death.

• “Hawai’i,” by Jason Norrett, The Rusty Nail

Norrett is skillful in his use of strong verbs, “he hitched up his backpack and crunched down onto Warren Street,” and vivid images, “Rusty Strauss leaned out of the driver’s side window. Both arms hanging against the driver’s side door like an ape’s.” The story promises drama: A bullied boy gets picked up after school by his mother’s loser boyfriend who takes him out of town to teach him how to shoot a gun. Will he love it or hate it? Be empowered or foolish? In typical postmodern ambiguity the answer is yes and no. Norrett had me until the last paragraph.

• “Accept/Decline,” by Andrew Keating, Eunoia Review

How does this get by an editor? One minute the antagonist is young and short with the hairstyle of a sportscaster and two paragraphs later he is a tall man with the thousand-dollar haircut. In either case, Adam English has bought a newspaper and started layoffs. Love this line by the protagonist:

If the newspaper were a human body, I was a tumor. I took up space, and provided no positive independent benefit, and slowly drained resources in increasing increments as time passed.

Ouch!