Under the Wolf, Under the Dog - Couverture souple

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.

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UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG by Adam Rapp. Copyright © 2007 by Adam Rapp. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

"Steve Nugent is a character as distinctive and disturbing as Salinger’s Holden Caulfield." — BOOKLIST (starred review)

Steve Nugent is in Burnstone Grove, a facility for kids who are either addicts or have tried to commit suicide. But Steve doesn’t fit in either group, and he used to go to the gifted school. So why is he in Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, Steve tries to figure out who he is by examining who he was. Both heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this brutal story of escape and the desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp.