Winter Breakage by David Levithan
Friday, June 26, 2026 at 9:33PM 
Published by Amazon Original Stories on June 23, 2026
“Winter Breakage” is one of six entries in the “Edge of Everything” series of Amazon Original Stories that focus on coming-of-age themes. Teenage insecurity seems to be a common theme in these stories. When Eric tells his friend Noah “I’m scared that nobody wants me here,” he’s echoing Isabel in “Safe Harbor” and Julia in “Julia at the Drive-In.”
The story takes place in early 1991, during the fifth week of Eric’s winter break. He is in his first year of college and has been invited to join four friends from his dorm who are getting together in New York City. They neglected to make a plan so they look in shop windows, consider visiting bookstores, and finally see a Woody Allen movie before heading to Chinatown.
Eric complains about the start of his freshman year: “I don’t feel like I chose my friends; it’s more like whoever made the dorm assignments chose my friends.” Maybe Eric doesn’t bother to attend classes or hang out at the student union, the typical ways in which students meet other students outside of their dorm.
Eric has a mildly obsessive interest in his friend Noah, the only other male who will be joining the outing. “It’s just that somewhere in my head, I’m aware that I’m lonely, and something in my brain is constantly telling me that he might be a person who’d make me feel less lonely.” Eric is a bit needy.
Eric has called Noah four times during the break but Noah hasn’t called him back. He left answering machine messages three times and hung up before the machine could answer the fourth call. He knew Noah was going to Florida for part of the break but still takes it personally that Noah didn’t return his calls after he returned.
When they meet in the city, Eric is snippy. Eric and Noah eventually speak to each other as if they are therapists and work out their lack of communication. It turns out (spoiler alert) they are equally insecure. End of story.
The three female characters serve no purpose at all. David Levithan managed to make New York City dull, but he did the same with Eric and Noah. Why Eric’s desire to open his heart to a guy who snubbed him should be of any interest to a reader is beyond me. I suppose Eric’s insecure loneliness is common to college freshmen who are putting high school behind them and haven’t yet made college connections, but Levithan does more telling than showing and Eric’s eventual confrontation with Noah struck me as artificial.
NOT RECOMMENDED