ABSTRACT
The American teenager is no longer an angry young man, not Holden Caulfield nor James Dean. She is smart, maybe not booksmart but certain she is smarter than most people, which is why tact seeps out of sentences she should probably think through first. She might be/could be/can be pretty but isn't ‘lovely’ and anyway this is not what defines her. She has friends but they tend to irritate her; if they were cooler, she would be too. She has The Vagina Monologues on order at the public library because her school refuses to stock it and even then she had to stare down the librarian. She watches, pays attention and waits for something important to happen after the interval called adolescence: a sweet and sticky space between childhood and adulthood like bubble gum stretched between her forefinger and teeth. Meet her and she extends a hand to shake, aiming for sophistication, managing to be blunt.
