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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of teens & young adult short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

5390+ Teens & young adult Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Looking for the best short stories for teens? Our collection of funny, suspenseful, and relatable young adult short stories will meet your needs.

Teens & young adult Short Stories – Page 282 of 360

Good Morning. Goodbye

Submitted to Contest #79

On the better days, I dream of being a little girl again; my six-year-old body slightly shivering with the cold breeze of Amman’s summer nights. I’d be half-asleep but pretending to be fully unconscious. My father—my ultimate hero back then—would pick me up and carry me down to our basement-like apartment to put me in bed. I always loved it when he did this. But today isn’t a good day. I woke up in the time I’d designated for myself, finding out I’d been crying in my sleep again. My jaw muscles felt too tense, and my teeth were again so ...

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The Heart of Avalon

Submitted to Contest #79

I can’t thank my Dad enough for raising me in Avalon. It’s one of the greatest places in California, and I’d argue, in America. It’s small, quaint, and everyone knows everyone. Your business is his business is Avalon’s business, and we all breathe as one, and you feel it as soon as you set foot here. You’re not one person in Avalon, you are a piece of here. We are the heart, pumping and working to keep it alive. The people here are one. That’s why I know that on my eighteenth birthday, when I got the letter addressed to me from Joan Young, w...

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Divided

Submitted to Contest #79

Divided My life was going smooth. IT was a life of insouciance, nothing to perturb that harmony. That was, days ago. I’m the strong and intrepid man God shaped me. I’m fully grown. But right now, I am struck by an awful realization that I’m not intrepid- at all. I’m too yellow-bellied to face my past, I’m too feeble to live with it. With God, nothing’s impossible, in His own time. I’ll learn to live with it. Maybe now’s the perfect time to learn to accept the past, and stop shooing it away and use it as a stepping stone for a future with God...

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Whiskey, bollocks and the aftermath

Submitted to Contest #79

Thanksgiving week is the only time of the year when an international student catches a break in a foreign university. The vacation is perfectly positioned between the last day of classes and final exams and spans ten days. Auburn University is no exception to this, offering the students a week and a half of winter solace.  A red-haired, nineteen-year-old Indian woman was sitting on the roadside snuggled in a zebra-print blanket. She was struggling to keep the cigarette in her hand lit long enough so she could use it to light another wi...

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Goodbye Mum

Submitted to Contest #79

“There was a letter for you in the mail today,” I hear Miss Lindsay, my former English teacher and now my current legal guardian, say as I enter the house, coming back from school. “It’s on your desk upstairs in your room.” “Okay!” I scream at her as I sprint up the stairs, all the way over to my bedroom. I walk through the door and see a white envelope laying on top of a pile of books on my desk. I pick it up and turn it around, searching for a name or address of the sender. Nothing. It’s just a plain white envelope. Curious, and also a l...

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A Fighter and a Scholar

Submitted to Contest #79

The colosseums in Rome were busiest on the sunny holidays when the citizens were feeling festive and needed entertainment of some sort. So it was in a certain large city in Rome one day, and the central arena was filled with a large and noisy crowd.   One large family, likely the wealthiest there, laughed the loudest and smiled the widest in anticipation for the fun of the sport at hand.  Among this lively group sat a very tall and powerfully built boy of around eighteen years, who spoke neither to the lordly men or vivacious...

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Moving Out

Submitted to Contest #79

“Today is the last day I’m hiding from you.”Celestine whispered to herself as she stared out of her bedroom window, secretly watching her older brother Christian who just walked out of the house. He came by again today to visit them—their parents, their youngest sibling Clara, and her, of course. He didn’t live far; his house was just a fifteen-minute drive where he lived with his wife.And just like the last time, Celestine didn’t come out of her room to meet her brother. None of their parents nor her sister bothered her, to her relief. She ...

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You Know I Love You, Right?

Submitted to Contest #79

Lane heard the stumbling footfalls of his intoxicated mother advance up the stairs of his house. He silently started begging to anyone who would listen for her to put herself to bed, and save him from her drunken torment. A feeling of trepidation shivered through him, hearing her approach his door rather than continue down the hall to her room. A little tap assaulted his bedroom door and it didn’t wait for an answer before slowly creaking open and giving way to his Mum’s silhouette peeping around the doorway, “Are you still awake?” Asking a...

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Useless Loyalty

Submitted to Contest #79

I had let my sister live with my because she had a son and I felt obligated since we came out of the same womb. It was nice and pleasant having company anyway. I loved my nephew and he was very mature to be just 8. My sister, Annie, said she wouldn't be long before finding her new home. I was glad to accept her in since we agreed on monthly payments of $600. She was paying on the regular or even before at times. I was happy and felt I can really count on her. She made me proud since she was a bit on the wild side. She started asking me to...

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Joanne

Submitted to Contest #79

The blistering heat created subtle waves across the fields for as far as I could see. As I waited in the beating sun, I saw Little Orphan Annie dancing across the waves, Sandy in tow.  Instead of the dog, I had a worn, brown suitcase at my side, containing whatever would fit from my room at Miss Eleanor’s House for Girls. I was standing at the bus stop a mile and a half down the road, which was more or less a weathered sign on a pole that the driver of the 152 knew to slow down for when they saw a person standing idle.  The f...

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Walking away

Submitted to Contest #79

+ The room was black. I extended a hand for the switch, but the light didn’t come on. Tears poured down my eyes and the fear formed into panic when I realized I wasn’t in my bedroom . I stood only to fall back down. My breath got shorter and shorter while I curled into a ball in the corner. Taking in the surroundings in series of quick glances, I seemed to be in every teenage girl's dream room. There was a bed with white covers full of pillows and a light pink throw, white led lights and greenery climbed up the walls. On the far end of the r...

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Adopted

Submitted to Contest #79

Mariah was just 2 years old;helpless through her eyes when a woman and a man stepped into 'Imani ' childrens' home.Her bright blue eyes as she stared at the woman and the man. 'This might be my new parents - Mariah couldn't stop staring at them;part of her dress all soaked up with saliva dripping from her mouth.She held the womans' hand; getting full attention from the woman. "Are you my new momma? In that soft sound with innocent look; the woman gave her that big warm smile, bending towards Mariah. 'Yes! Baby ,we're your parents - Tears of...

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How could you?!

Submitted to Contest #79

“Why didn’t you study more?! 86% isn’t good enough!” Sarah then launched the beer bottle she had grasped in her hand at Elle, but missed by a couple of inches, because she was too drunk to aim the bottle properly. Elle was petrified, but not because of her mom's behavior. She was used to her mom throwing glass at her, it was why she always had an absurd amount of cuts on her arms. It was her father she was afraid of.  Her parents had always been alcoholics, and nobody had a clue. Her parents had a way of making sure no one knew how muc...

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Babysitting My Best Friend's Kids and the Trainwreck that Followed

Submitted to Contest #79

After the doorbell rang, Nora opened it with a giddy and half-drunk smile with a bottle of tequila in her hand. “Alright, who’s ready to get wasted for gir—” She stopped mid sentence when instead of her thirty-four-year-old best friend, Nora found her best friend’s seventeen-year-old daughter instead standing next to a man in a suit that was one size too big. With a huff, Nora lowered the bottle and her eyes. “Thing One? What are you doing here? Where’s Thing Two?” “My sister is at sleepaway summer camp until next Saturday,” Taylor said wi...

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Goodbye Momma

Submitted to Contest #79

The bakery was quiet, the lingering scent of baked bread hung in the air. All the pastries, cakes and cookies that were left over were boxed and ready to be dropped off at the fire station down the street. Most of the time there wasn’t much leftover, but the guys at the station appreciated anything they were given. It was either give them to the guys or Cassie would have to take them home and try not to eat all of it once she got off work. She didn’t like to serve her customers day old desserts so the few that she would have left, were gifte...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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