Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

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.

5400+ 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 3 of 360

The Gamble

Submitted to Contest #300

“What if I fall through?” She clicked her pincers together three times, like a quick knock at the door. “You doubt me so?” Her voice was teasing, nearly kind. The silken web beneath my feet quivered slightly as her spindly legs stepped around me. “If you fall through,” her eyes bore into me, prickling my skin, “you’ll die.” I swallowed. Dew stuck to the threads ahead, bouncing lightly with the breeze. The web itself connected across three trees, hundreds of feet above the forest floor. All I could see of the ground was a light blanket of mi...

24 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

My Cage of Safety

Submitted to Contest #300

Sometimes, I feel as though I have different spirits in my head and none of them like this body or the combined person they have become. The pressure to satisfy all of them would have been the end of me. They would’ve consume me whole while they are set free to enter the mind and torture another. With their all consuming thoughts they combine in the cruelest ways in order to drive some of the strongest souls insane, my soul just barely enough to keep me afloat for another few years. Only until they split into the proper form, separate from o...

5 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Intertwined Apart

Submitted to Contest #300

CW: contains themes of domestic violence, emotional abuse, self-harm, and trauma.Hands on the wheel. Hands on the wheel. Focus focus focus focus. Not on the raging thoughts within my head, or the white patches of skin making their way to my fingertips from how hard I'm gripping. Not on the pounding in my chest that still hasn't gone away, or on the tears I so desperately want to let go of.No. I have to focus on the road. The miles and miles of what once was an empty field, filled with the beauty of greenery, flowers, maybe even a river, who ...

8 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

They Always Do

Submitted to Contest #300

The encyclopedias form a protective barrier between me and the world. They cascade along the built-in bookshelf behind the couch as I arch my neck along the cushions. I watch the red lava form question marks in the yellow tinted liquid, hot to the touch. I run my fingers over the dictionary’s toothy edges. The golden tin box with pheasants on its lid has embroidery thread of various colors in it, but I am too nervous to make a friendship bracelet, and I wouldn’t give it to Tegan Beckman, even if he might need it given his situation.Last nigh...

5 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Even a Dirty Pool is a Mirror

Submitted to Contest #300

TW: Themes of childhood death, dying, and terminal illnessIt was the summer of 1990 at Girl Scout Camp in Upstate New York, and I was 15 years old. The first thing I noticed the day I was dropped off was the eerie outdoor pool. A flimsy sign indicated a maximum depth of 12 feet near the thin diving board, which inched out hesitantly over the stagnant water below. The water seemed to grow a kind of green, sludgy mildew that only would be tamed by an intricate cocktail of every cleaner that existed in the world. Glistening from afar, the pool’...

7 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

For The Very First Time

Submitted to Contest #300

I opened that letter and was astonished, I got accepted! Into my dream college! I was so happy my emotions were like a volcanic eruption. I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to tell my parents. “Absolutely not Aurora! That’s too far” my parents exclaimed, " but mom it's my dream school, and I can pay for it.” “Well how are you gonna do that?” my dad asks. “I’ll get a high paying job, I have a couple things I have in mind” I say. “Fine, but you have to come visit, deal?” My parents say, I respond “Deal.” I leave for California tomorrow. I staye...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

& Eden

Submitted to Contest #300

02/22/2025Missed call (2) : Edie Left: 2:47 AM It’s still here—the park, I mean. Exactly how we left it. Not that I’ve been checking. The city hasn’t bulldozed it, the palm tree near the dirt still leans crooked from all those times we failed to climb it. I drove by last week, just to see what was left. Whenever Lē’ahi’s was on the route, you’d find somewhere to stop. You’d drive all along the road just to park illegally at the next park over. “They won’t tow us,” you’d say, grinning like the city itself owed you a favor.Today I passed your...

8 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Acceptance

Submitted to Contest #300

The breeze is something I've missed. All these years gone by, forever to stay in the past, and not one did I come back here. Not even for a month. Not even for a week nor just one singular day. 24 hours. Why didn't I come back here? It's stupid of me to ask myself that question, really, when I know the answer. I know myself, I'm not that stupid. My knowledge can overtake me sometimes, tricking me into trying to forget how I really feel as to make myself feel better. But the truth hurts, and it really fucking sucks sometimes. There's nothing ...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The hallways beckons.

Submitted to Contest #300

Only one.Before the world grew heavy, before the days thickened into silence, Emily and I sat on one bed sharing a vision. In the empty afternoons after the school bell’s ring had long dissipated, we would lie on the plush pillows, hands clasped and staring at the ceiling until the lines in the plaster rearranged themselves into forests, dead cities and anything we wanted. We learned early a fact that most don’t ever learn. Boredom was a kind of doorway to your subconscious. If you sat still – oh so perfectly still – you could hear the walls...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Place Keeps on Haunting Me

Submitted to Contest #300

The Place Keeps on Haunting Me Even though it has been a few years since I was last there, the place still haunts me quite regularly. It is in all of my nightmares. While it does not seem completely logical for me to ‘blame’ the place, just because several things that happened there provide the persistent pictures in my frequent nightmares, blaming the island is what I have done. The Nightmares of the Island Once, as a 12 year old boy, I took out the family canoe to paddle to the island of my future nightmares. I did this without telling ...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Sound of Belonging

Submitted to Contest #300

I was fifteen — old enough to understand, old enough to feel pain, old enough to know what it meant to miss something deeply.I had always loved Mexico.It was the place I could truly call home.There was relief in simple things —eating elote after school,walking to the plaza with my friends,feeling the sun on my skin almost all year round.Maybe around December you'd need a light jacket —what most people would generously call "winter."And the beach —the beach was always there, waiting,like a secret friend you could visit anytime.I felt free.I f...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Ana Sofia

Submitted to Contest #300

“Let's play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for €250,000!” The host’s voice echoed across the room as the final question appeared on the screen before Martim.What was Charles Darwin's primary area of study at Cambridge University?A) TheologyB) Natural historyC) MathematicsD) Law Martim wriggled nervously in his chair. He didn’t know. But he knew it to be a trick question — you just don’t ask a question with an obvious answer for €250,000. So it certainly wasn’t B. Martim glanced at his watch. He knew the stakes were high, but he was running o...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Funny Guy

Submitted to Contest #299

Prompt: Center your story around a comedian, clown, street performer, or magicianFunny GuyThe curtain goes up! The music begins to play as I dance onto the stage bellowing: “Overture, curtain, lights, this is it, the night of nights no more rehearsing and nursing a part. We know every part by heart. Overture, curtain, lights this is it; you’ll hit the heights. On with the show this is it! (1)Bugs Bunny would be proud of me as I gracefully sailed across the stage donning a top hat and cane. I saw the wonder in the wide-eyed gazes of my audien...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Magnificent Temper of Catherine the Great

Submitted to Contest #299

“Sharpen those minds, folks. It’s test time!”Hark, the holy master doth cry. Seriously though, how do they expect us to be excited about our futures when they use discount Eugene Levy as the personification of a fulfilled education? I stare at him as he stops at my desk, licking a grotesque finger onto a stapled manifesto of misery while a sickly smile spreads on his sagging face like a delightful disease. He leaves a spot of saliva on my paper as he slithers onto his next victim. I am simultaneously mortified and mystified by this meagre m...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Ditching School

Submitted to Contest #299

Liza began driving, and asked us, “Would you like me to come along, so I can give you a ride home whenever you’re ready?”Arthur replied, “No, that’s okay. You don’t have to stay with us. I’ll call you to come pick us up whenever we’re ready.”“Okay, not a problem, cuz.” She grinned at us through her sunglasses. NSYNC was blasting on the radio. This girl sure had amazing taste in music.She decided to drop us off at the mall where Arthur and I could hang out for a few hours, probably until school was over. Her plan was to return to Arthur’s pla...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.