Request #646 from Cat

I love your blog and am trying to find some lost short stories. I
assume they’re all in the same anthology but I’ve dug through all the
Donald Gallo collections I could find. I would have read these ca.
1988-1992, and I am very sure they were mass market/pulp Sweet Valley
High sized paperbacks.

1. A male teen can’t get over the death of the kooky high school
English teacher and clashes with the strict male substitute who
insists on teaching grammar, and eventually goes to a state college
and becomes an English teacher himself. there’s a detail where his
girlfriend is melting butterscotch chips but no one eats the
cookies/brownies because they taste funny.

2. Two teens are junior high sweethearts but eventually morph into
being the kind of couple that looks alike and don’t have identities
outside their couplehood. This one is less interesting but now that
I’m an old it’s an interesting perspective.

3. A chubby, unathletic teen gets really invested in supporting a
local track star’s effort of running a race while pushing another
classmate (??) who uses a wheelchair. The track star is successful but
in the process sacrifices a scholarship (??) or something significant
in order to do this race; the narrator realizes she could have run
with the classmate, too.

I have no idea if the authors of these were big cheeses like Cormier,
Mazer, etc. but was kind of disappointed that none of these were with
the other Life Lessons for Young Teens type anthologies that I did
actually remember.

THANK YOU ❤