Fiction Archives - Uncharted

Sandstone Ballad

The statue looked uncannily like her mother. Its nose curved up, stout at the base and plump near the nostrils. Long straight hair fell below its waist; flowy, as if caught in the same wind that brushed against Roadside’s ears. If she squinted, a part of her was so sure that the statue would start […]

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Crush

You’ve got to understand, first up, that I was obsessed with this boy mainly because he wasn’t the sort of boy anyone else would be obsessed with, which left him all to me. He’d kick a football with his friends up the road to school, right up the middle of the road, mind you, weaving […]

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My Neck-Mouth Can Sing Louder Than Yours

It starts with an inch-long slit in my neck. Mom notices first. “Got a secret you want to tell us?” she says with a laugh, chewing on the waffles that she makes for me and Dad every morning before school. She grins at me as wide as the scar on her neck where her own […]

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The Blue Hour

Do not go hunting in the blue hour. That is the creed Reid learned from childhood to their teenaged years, following the footsteps of their parents, treading lightly when winter falls and shuttering windows against the twilight. Blue covers the forest in all its density when the sun goes down, enough to turn snow and […]

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The Last Summer

Gen had fourteen freckles on her nose. Nora knew this because she counted them. In fact, Nora could’ve charted a map from Gen’s hairline to her neck and identified the exact location of every landmark on the way. She knew the crooked angles of Gen’s nose, the exact curve of her lips, and the shape […]

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#83: Kimberly Frank Is a Skank

“#83: Kimberly Frank Is a Skank” by Sharon Inkpen is the winner of the Through the Looking Glass Challenge hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted. Page 1 It’s 1989. You are thirteen-year-old Colleen Paxton. Puberty is hell. High school is hell. Your life is hell. The lunch bell just rang. You’re supposed to be in […]

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Tears Like Summer Rain

“Tears Like Summer Rain” by Rose Rasor is the first place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX “Tears Like Summer Rain” by Rose Rasor is a beautiful story—thematically, stylistically, and in terms of its structure. It reminds me of a […]

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All Mad Here

“All Mad Here” by Emi Davis is the second place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX It’s very difficult to write a story that grows out of and incorporates another story—that is, to write intertextually. But Emi Davis, the author […]

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The Bird Bag

“The Bird Bag” by Karen Elizabeth is the third place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX “The Bird Bag” is a wildly ambitious story in which Karen Elizabeth creates an entire fantastical world, with its customs and beliefs. We are […]

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Young Amphibian

Content warning: graphic dissection  Jerry and I run into the bicycle shed, frogs palpitating in our palms. The kettle fizzes, quicksands, groans on our makeshift stove. For too long this place has squirmed with screwdrivers and old toasters! Every shed would be ecstatic to be the site of an earthquaking discovery. “Gloves on, Wyatt,” yells […]

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Moon Pies

After a greasy lunch at a diner on the side of the highway, I opened my coin purse and started laying the coins out on the table, trying to remember their shapes and denominations. Twenty-five, fifty, that small one is a ten so that’s sixty… sixty-five… I pushed the coins around, arranging them in a […]

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Enemy Lines

The heat was brutal in the weeks before Ari was captured. Parched Goondiwindi soil baked in forty-degree days and denuded trees stood cemented in place by air that refused to move. Nothing moved in that heat. Nothing but the Southerners hitting a rare breach in the wall—they darted through the streets like wild rabbits, their […]

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