Teen Angst? Naaah ... by Ned Vizzini Page A

cool. I think his head should explode.
    â€œShut up, nosy!”
    â€œHey, look, I’ll give you sixty-five cents if you go to another car. That’s a lot of money.”
    â€œNo, nosy!”
    One of the college girls rolls a quarter across the floor—the homeless guy cocks his head as he hears it spinning on the ground. He stares at the coin as it spirals to a stop. It settles on the floor. We pull into Borough Hall. The homeless guy takes one last look at the quarter, dismisses it, and strides confidently from the train. The college kids are silent. They know he’s beaten them—he didn’t take their orders and he didn’t take their quarter.
    I grab that quarter before anyone else can. My pride’s worth a lot less than twenty-five cents.
    â€œHey man, give me that,” the college guy barks from his seat. I flip the coin to him, but I’m not a good flipper; it ends up on the floor again. “Someday some kid is going to put that quarter in his mouth,” I think.
    The college guy eventually picks it up and pockets it. The train pulls into Grand Army Plaza. I stow my Magic cards and sling my bass over my shoulder, to impress the college girls. One of them is nice to me. “Merry Christmas,” she says.
    â€œYep.” I zip my coat and pull my collar over my mouth. My breath moistens it, and by the time I get home, the moisture has turned to ice.
    * Seminal psychedelic rock guitarist.

LET’S BUY BEER
    I finally came home drunk. I was happy about this because Matt Groening, * in
Work Is Hell
, ** lists the twenty-five steps to manhood, and “first time drunk” is number seventeen, right after “first compulsive masturbation” and just before “first car accident.” I had to do it sooner or later.
    It wasn’t even my fault—blame it on that clerk at the Mini Mart. I stopped at the Mini Mart by my high school almost every day; this was where I bought Nacho Doritos, Original Pringles, and orange Hostess cupcakes. I bought a porno magazine there once, too, but I felt like such a loser afterward that I threw it out on the way home and never bought one again.
    One Friday afternoon, I strode into the Mini Mart following a butt-numbing day at school—one of those days when, by the end of classes, I was slouching so low that my spine lay on my chair, and my eyes were level with my desk. I was with my friend Owen, who was doing his best to cheer me up.
    Owen was a pudgy little bug-eyed, dark-haired,filthy-minded Russian kid who I met sophomore year. He thought of himself, in turns, as a master computer hacker, rock star, sexual savant, philosopher, skateboarder, DJ, and Gucci-wearing highroller. You could only believe a quarter of what he said, especially if he was talking about money or girls. But he was a hell of a guy.
    â€œHey, Ned,” he chuckled, as we entered the Mini Mart, passing the potato chips. “Let’s buy beer.”
    My mind weighed the options. Worst-case scenario: I get busted for public drinking and start a criminal record. If you have a criminal record, you can’t become a doctor. But I’d already decided against that profession.
    â€œOkay,” I said, standing by the beer fridge. “How?”
    â€œYou could probably do it with your Stuy I.D.”
    I’m not sure how other schools handle identification, but at Stuyvesant, we had these little white cards. Each one listed your name, your date of birth (but the year was first, and there were no slash marks—which made it very confusing), and a bar code. *
    My Stuy I.D. was a plastic casualty. I’d left it in the back pocket of my jeans for two years. It had beenthrough the wash countless times; it was ripped in thirds and held together with Scotch tape; and it said on top, in big scripty letters, “Stuyvesant High School.” There was no way that any clerk could mistake it for anything legitimate.
    I showed it to