Under the Wolf, Under the Dog - Couverture rigide

How to start?

Okay. Here it goes.

Mrs. Leene said I should begin by describing myself.

So, my name is Steve Nugent. I'm sixteen. I'll be seventeen next November. It's the middle of December, and the trees around here are caked in ice and sort of silvery in that creepy, wintry way, so right now seventeen seems like a hundred years off.

Where I'm from, they call me White Steve because I'm so pale. The ones who call me that are pale too, but not as pale as me. I'm like soap or paper. I'm like Easter candy. I'm like glue or piano keys. If I stay in the sun too long, I turn pink; not red — pink, like Spam.

In terms of size, I'm six foot three and about 160 pounds, which is way too skinny, I know. I can't help that right now. The doctors say I will fill out in a few years. At this point I would describe myself as being a pretty high-percentage dodge-ball target.

I guess my hair is brown, but there might be some red in it, which makes me worry about my future pubic situation, as in when I finally get some upholstery down low, what color it will be.

That might be too much information.

Sorry.

I'm also blind in my right eye, which I will tell you more about later.

_______

UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG by Adam Rapp. Copyright © 2007 by Adam Rapp. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

Alternately heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this teenager's brutal story of escape and desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp.

I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids.

Steve Nugent is in a facility called Burnstone Grove. It's a place for kids who are addicts, like Shannon Lynch, who can stick $1.87 in change up his nose, or for kids who have tried to commit suicide, like Silent Starla, whom Steve is getting a crush on. But Steve doesn't really fit in either group. He used to go to a gifted school. So why is he being held at Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, in which he recalls his confused and violent past, Steve is left to figure out who he is by examining who he was.