fiction Archives - Page 402 of 709

All of Me
by Chris Baron (Author)

Booktalk: Ari has body-image issues. After a move across the country, his parents work selling and promoting his mother’s paintings and sculptures. Ari’s bohemian mother needs space to create, and his father is gone for long stretches of time on “sales” trips.

Meanwhile, Ari makes new friends: Pick, the gamer; the artsy Jorge, and the troubled Lisa. He is also relentlessly bullied because he’s overweight, but he can’t tell his parents–they’re simply not around enough to listen.

After an upsetting incident, Ari’s mom suggests he go on a diet, and she gives him a book to help. But the book–and the diet–can’t fix everything. As Ari faces the demise of his parents’ marriage, he also feels himself changing, both emotionally and physically.

Snippet:

When you are fat,
you get picked on.
It’s just how it is,
especially if you’re the new kid.
I don’t know what to say
most of the time.

I just want them to like me.
I want to fit in.

A 2019 Cybils Poetry nominee

Piñata Moon
by Torran Anderson (Author)

Booktalk: When Envo’s friend, J., commits suicide, he’s caught between his regular routine of driving around looking for parties and his own struggles with depression. Told over the course of one night in Tucson, Arizona, Enzo searches for a rite of passage that will help him confront J.’s death. As Enzo wrestles with his complicated history with J., he struggles to communicate with his friends, Matas and Sci-fi, and imagines the moon is his only confidant. Enzo keeps a running list of the tiny things he enjoys about living to combat his urge to follow in J.’s footsteps and he receives tweets from the moon that give him the guidance he craves.

Snippet:

@themoonforreal
Give me a good reason to exit this life early.
I can’t think of one.

@themoonforreal
No point in taking your life, Envo. You haven’t
lived yet.

A 2019 Cybils Poetry nominee