First published in the USA in 2008 by Alfred A Knopf,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House Inc, New York
First published in Great Britain in 2014
by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited
1st Floor, The Yellow Building
1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2008 David Levithan
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Some of the stories contained in this work were originally published as follows:
“The Alumni Interview” in Sixteen: Stories About That Sweet and Bitter Birthday, ed. Megan McCafferty (Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 2004)
“Lost Sometimes” in 21 Proms, ed. David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft (Scholastic, Inc., 2007)
“Princes” in Every Man for Himself: Ten Original Stories About Being a Guy, edited by Nancy Mercado (Dial Books, a member of Penguin Group [USA] Inc., 2005)
“Breaking and Entering” in Rush Hour: Reckless, ed. Michael Cart (Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 2006)
“What a Song Can Do” in What a Song Can Do: 12 Riffs on the Power of Music, ed. Jennifer Armstrong (Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 2004)
First e-book edition 2013
ISBN 978 1 4052 7135 6
eISBN 978 1 7803 1482 2
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
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For Nancy
(The book of love would not be long and boring were she the editor)
This book starts, bizarrely enough, with me in physics class.
It was my junior year of high school. Despite the best efforts of my physics teacher, I was continually bored out of my wits. I needed something to do besides pay attention, and passing notes to my friend Lynda only occupied about half the time. So I decided to write a story, going through the physics book (it would look like I was being studious!) and finding as many romantic notions as possible within its pages (I would not be studious at all!). I think I started in November, and by February I had finished the story. I decided to give it to my friends for Valentine’s Day. The next year, they wanted another. And so on, for all the years after.
Not all of these stories are official valentine stories – I can, it seems, write about love and its follies year-round. But when putting together this book of stories about love (“love stories” has the wrong feel to it – I prefer “stories about love”), I decided to go all the way back. As a result, this book contains that first valentine story (“A Romantic Inclination”) and the one that came the year after (“Memory Dance,” which is still my mom’s favorite). Instead of trying to rewrite them as I’d write them now, I’ve decided to leave them as I wrote them in high school, give or take some punctuation and an awkward last line. “The escalator, a love story” (from college), “Intersection,” “The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes,” “Flirting with Waiters,” “Starbucks Boy,” and “Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat” were also valentine stories, as were “The Good Witch,” “Andrew Chang,” “Lost Sometimes,” and “Skipping the Prom,” a medley of prom riffs that I turned into separate stories here. (My novels Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility, and Are We There Yet? also started as valentine stories.)
All of the stories in this book (indeed, most of the stories I’ve written) have been proofread by friends of mine. It is foolish to try to list them all, and I’m sure I’m going to overlook some of them, but I’d like to attempt to thank them for taking the time and helping to make me the writer I am. So thanks to the proofreaders, the suggestion-makers, and the story-encouragers (in order of appearance): Mom and Dad, Adam, Mayling Birney, Lynda Hong, Jennifer Bodner, Eliza Sporn, Jennifer Fain, Cary Retlin, Michael Rothman, Andrew Farmer, Piper Hoffman, Shira Epstein, Jennifer Corn, Alistair Newbern, Karen Popernik, David Leventhal, Joanna Fried, Janet Vultee, Ellen Miles (I think all the pages are here this time), Nancy Mercado, Dan Poblocki, Nancy Hinkel, Brian Selznick, Billy Merrell, Nick Eliopulos, and Allison Wortche, as well as my friends (past and present, authorial and editorial) at Scholastic, my friends at Random House, my Teen Author Drinks Night cohorts, and the fine purveyors of Pink Drinks.
These stories aren’t interconnected . . . but of course they are, in a way. They don’t share characters, but they share many other things. I’m sure I don’t even recognize all of the connections now. I know people are afraid of story collections – they don’t get the same respect as novels – but I don’t understand why. Together, these stories say much more than they would apart. How They Met refers not only to the characters in the stories but also to the stories themselves. Here they are, meeting for the first time. In the same way that paragraphs meet, and sentences meet, and words meet.
Enjoy the intersections.
D.L.