Kyler Doss

You set out to cover everything west of the Mississippi, this your bus trip after you graduate from high school and want to find new things that you don't know you are looking for. You start to find out that it's actually these boys you are looking for, the boys you meet easy on the road you didn't meet back home. You want to take all of them with you or stay with all of them, if that's okay.

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.

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.

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.

A shy boy fears that he won't make a friend, but then he does, unless the other boy is only acting. The street theater game the kids are playing swallows up everything on the avenue, from what is real to what is not. Oz can only hope that the boy he likes is for real, or else love tells the biggest lie of all.

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.

When two happy boys push one another toward a crime, one of them speed-shifts up a gear too far. The fast cash and stupid love that Karl takes for real - all that breaks up under the hunter's moon. So he reaches for another gear in a new-look October, like how you can make your way through high school and still go out with who you actually want to.

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.

The high school boys in these stories get very involved with the boys they meet - and come up against the problem of love. But the problem is never love itself - only its henchmen: words, water, rumors, and affection. From the West Coast of the USA to an American school overseas, it all adds up to 4 novellas: Drown the Boy, Why Do You Touch Me, Try Something Immoral, and A Shortstop's Play.