First Stories

A romantic story about two young teens. He loves her, she isn't sure. He joins the army and then comes home on leave. She has a secret.

Eighteen-year-old Heather is house-sitting and caring for her employer's dog. Heather is nude sunbathing, expecting the woman will be gone for a week. Surprised when her employer returns early, the teen is put at her ease. intimacies quickly evolve into a relationship that includes an unexpected twist.

James is 12 when his father abandons him and his mother Ellen. She asked James to brush her hair and it becomes a nightly bedroom ritual but then he grows older and at 15 he is having thoughts about his mother that he shouldn't have. What to do, what to do?

Fayard knows he’s young, too young to have all the answers, but he reckons life has already taught him a thing or two. Having returned from boarding school, he intends to while away many long, leisurely days in his hometown before setting off for university. He certainly doesn’t foresee any drastic upheavals looming on the horizon. However, life has other plans in store, with new stories to tell and secrets to share, starting with those he believes he knows best.

Told in the style of the Decameron, but featuring Sister Bertrille, a young nun in the '60s. She alights before an old man who takes advantage of her naivete -- several times. A short, quirky story. (Celeste's score: 10, 10, 10: "This is an excellent story.")

The story of Steve, a young man who encounters a mysterious virus that gives him the power to make others feel sensations that aren't really there.

When fourteen-year-old Tony's mom takes him to the Family Practitioner for a check-up, he doesn't really think anything of it. But the doctor is beautiful... and then she says those eight terrifying and yet thrilling words.