By Lisa Deng Kaya Kaminski advises I should work to love myself as much as I can. Not more than the people around me but not so much less. Actually, she just said black salt tastes divine on scrambled tofu as an egg substitute. But I know what she meant. Kaya is my guru. I …

By Keenan Colditz They warned her: Beware the rapture of the deep. All around her, water clear to the bottom. With spear gun in hand, she swims after a yellowtail eluding her behind a cluster of rocks overgrown with kelp. If she brings back a good one for the campfire, she’ll save this sunburned island …

By Ryn Seidewitz Even Mom thought we were dating. My mom, the woman who’d been telling me pointedly since I was eleven, “you know it’s OK to be gay, you know that right?” thought me and Liz were dating. She’d straight up sat me down and handed me a box of condoms after I’d gotten …

By Alexandra Cline When we met, you had this terrible neck ache. You held your head at a 45-degree angle, looking from side to side, unable to actually turn your face in any direction other than forward. You said you had “some kind of accident,” and showed me all of these pill bottles with little …

By A. Grant I sit on my windowsill and blow smoke out into the air. The heater is blowing on my back, but I put on a jacket for the private part of the night. It’s a tight squeeze in the small frame of the window, so I hunch over and let my legs dangle. …

By Lauren Kinney Every Friday after school, I walked two blocks down the street and then down the stairs into the Metro station. It was two stops down the line, then back out into the sunlight. I used to bring clothes to change into, and then I didn’t bother anymore. In the spring, I wore …