high school - Stories

What do Bar Mitzvahs and food carts have in common? Nothing… unless you’re talking about a precocious young teen with a Jewish boyfriend and a best friend who's half black Cajun and half Asian, and who’s a gifted teenage chef. With a double Bar Mitzvah on the Fourth of July weekend, why not make it a pool party? Oy Vey!

Larry was the son of a famous opera singer and a well-known conductor, but his passion in life was to be a medical scientist. However, when the pandemic waylaid his plans to go to the Bronx High School of Science, instead he applied to LaGuardia, New York's premier public high school of the arts. Just as an intermezzo is a short musical bridge, Intermezzo brings together characters from other stories in the New York Stories series while filling in some gaps. Told from the point of view of Larry's girlfriend, Robin, he learns that sometimes the shortest path to one's goals isn't the straightest one.

A man who is desperate for money robs a bank, with unexpected consequences.

"What do you want," Tommy asked, looking at the shadow with his eyes, watching it as it paused to a stop in front of him, its large black beak turning slightly to the side.

Its beak opened only a crack, and human screaming of men and women, children and infants, leaked out. Screaming, and sobbing, and maniacal laughing that all filled Tommy's ears with a rotten, disgusting feeling, and replacing the ticking of Toni's clock- loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood, yet only wrecking havoc upon Tommy.

Tommy Fish, a guy with a talent for relentless bullying and hatred, gets help from the devil to bully his favorite kid, indefinitely.

Jake is a rebellious teenager, perhaps as a response to his father - the captain of the local police force - who has very strict ideas about how Jake should live his life. A mysterious smile is exactly what Jake needed to show his dad that his life is his own.

I was fourteen years old for six hundred years. I'm ninety-five now.

Matthew, my companion, my lover, my life, lies in the hospital bed next to mine. His breathing is shallow. I am worried. It was my turn to die first this time.

Before Matthew, there was another …