Written as a college admission essay, eighteen-year-old Harry Jones recounts a childhood defined by the hideous scars he hid behind, and how forming a band brought self-confidence, friendship, and his first kiss.

Forcibly sucked into an abyss at the moment of their deaths, six smarter-than-most teenagers wake up in a deadly, desolate future world, where only one of them holds the key to getting everyone back home.

Golden "Go" Jennings wasn't supposed to be on Bus 21 the day it blew up in New York City. Neither was her boyfriend, Chandler. But they were. And so was Rudy, a cute stranger Go shared a connection with the night before. And Caroline, a girl whose silence ended up costing nineteen people their lives. Though it's been a year since the bombing, Go isn't any closer to getting over what happened. With Chan completely closed off to even talking about it,...

When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother, but soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented there by the beautiful Cassandra.

Nine-year-old Julian almost died when he was born and he believes that he has a special connection to the universe because of that, and he wants to make his two moms and his sister (who turned into a black hole of discontentment when she turned fourteen) happy because he is convinced that soon he will die and travel to the dog star--but now they have moved to Maine and he resolves to also use his "uni-sense" ability to help Mr. X, their neighbor,...