Abe Lincoln Book Award 2021: Dress Codes for Small Towns

Eric: There was the day we were born. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. The years where we stuck by each other's side--as Morgan's mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won't be best friends forever. That there'll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there's no turning back the clock. Morgan: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I'm trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. Maybe one day I'll be ready to become the person I am inside. To become her. To tell the world. To tell Eric. But when? Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan's destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they're meant to be--and if they're meant to be together.

When Mara's twin brother Owen is accused of rape by her friend Hannah, Mara is forced to confront her feelings about her family, her sense of right and wrong, a trauma from her past, and the future with her ex-girlfriend, Charlie.

Swim team members and best friends Matt, Sean, and Coop, set themselves the summertime goal of seeing a live girl naked, and while the chances of that happening seem very dim, Matt's personal goal to swim the one-hundred-yard butterfly to impress the new girl on the team seems even less likely to happen.