From School Library Journal Grade 7 Up--A surrogate family of homeless teens lives on the streets of New York City, and the bleakness of their lives is clear early on when Country Club dies of "liver failure due to acute alcohol poisoning." His brief life is summarized in a one-page dossierlike format that immediately precedes the narrative description of his death. These clinical dossiers recur, like a premonition, as one by one this ragtag "family" disintegrates. But first, readers meet Maggot; Rainbow; beautiful, HIV-positive 2Moro; her club-hopping, sexually amorphous friend Jewel; the protagonist/narrator Maybe; and Tears, the newest, and, at 12 years of age, youngest member of the group. Gradually revealed are the physical and psychological scars that marked their paths to the police sweeps, illness, drugs, and destitution that litter their lives. Also made clear is the fact that these teens reject many offers of help, but find that the street looks better than the horrors from which they've fled. A kindly librarian, Anthony, becomes the hero, reuniting Tears with her grandparents and offering the possibility of a safe future to Maybe. While the events described in this cautionary tale are shocking, the language is not, making these all-too-real problems accessible to a wide readership. More sanitized than E. R. Frank's
