What If I Am
Brian Ferguson is having a pretty good seventh grade year, unlike last year. The middle years are when a lot of us begin to figure out who we are. It’s also a time when we really want to fit in, but “fitting in” and “being who we are” do not always go together. And that’s when things can get pretty complicated.
For Brian “pretty complicated” doesn't begin to tell the story. He has always “sort of” known he was different, but in sixth grade, he figures out how to name the difference he sees in himself: He’s gay. I can deal with this, Brian tells himself, because it’s going to be my secret. No one else will ever know, not at school, and certainly not his parents, but after someone starts calling him names, Brian’s whole life changes.
Eventually Brian finds a safe place where he can be himself. Together with other kids like him, he figures out what really matters. Until, that is, the group decides to go on a weekend canoe trip and something terrible happens. Then Brian and his friends have to deal with their worst nightmare in an unfamiliar and dangerous place. But as it turns out, that may not be the greatest challenge they face on that weekend.
AJ and the Keeper of the Dead
“AJ stumbled forward. He didn't even bother to look back at the others; instead, he stared into the cemetery, into the pitch black, trying to make his legs move. He was going to be walking over dead bodies—in the dark. He pictured a garden of ghostly hands poking up through the ground, grabbing for him..."
Sometimes twelve-year-old AJ Montgomery doesn't make the best decisions, and somehow his dad always finds out. And if that happens, AJ knows he's going to be sorry—really sorry! When AJ steps through gates of the local cemetery, he knows it's the last thing in the world his dad would want him to do. There will be consequences. But just what consequences, he can't begin to imagine.
