Jessie Ann Foley - You Know Im No Good

TROUBLED TEEN . What a stupid phrase. First of all, youll never catch any self-respecting human between the ages of thirteen and nineteen referring to herself as a teen. Kid, girl, person: those are all fine. Teen, however, is a social construct, a word that should never be used to describe actual people but instead reserved for all those not-too-childish but also not-too-sophisticated products that adults in marketing meetings are always trying to convince us we cant live without: Fuzzy, utterly functionless beanbag chairs. Glittery phone cases. Rainbow-striped scrunchies. Crop tops that claim to be a size six but are actually the size of a Post-it note. Pretty much anything with pom-poms on it.

And troubled? To me, this is a word that brings to mind someone sitting in a library, staring off into space, thoughtfully stroking her chin as she ponders a difficulta troublingalgebraic equation. I wish I were troubled. Instead, what I am is enraged.

At what, exactly, I couldnt tell you. The world, my place in it, and everyone who populates itdoes that narrow it down? Anyway, it doesnt matter, since Red Oak Academy: A Therapeutic Girls Boarding School for Chronically Pissed-Off Humans Between the Ages of Thirteen and Nineteen doesnt flow off the tongue nearly as well as Red Oak Academy: A Therapeutic Girls Boarding School for Troubled Teens.

Seriously, what is it with adults and their euphemisms? Why are they so terrified of calling things what they actually are? For example, why does Alanna get all bent out of shape when I call Lauren and Lola my half sisters? Why cant you drop the half? she asks. Theyre just your sisters. But that isnt true. Its not like I dont love the twins, but the fact is, they came out of Alannas vagina, and I didnt. End of story.

And why have all my teachers insisted, since I was six years old, in calling me gifted? Im not gifted. Im just smart. I read a ton, I test well, and I like writing almost as much as I like cutting class to smoke weed in the parking lot behind the bankrupt Sears at Six Corners. So what? What does gifted even mean? How is it a gift, being bored as fuck at school my whole life, having to pretend to fumble over words like prodigious and irrelevant when Im asked to read aloud so the other kids wont think Im a freak? Feeling like my brain is always cranking, like it can never shut off, like the only thing that can calm it down is to inhale a book or a drug or a boy?

Perhaps Mia is troubled because shes so gifted.

This was Mr. Cullertons brilliant assessment of me when I had my last suspension hearing.

Or maybe, Alanna had said, because she just couldnt help herself, its because of what happened to her mother.

And thats the thing. Alanna gets all butthurt that I wont drop the half from half sisters when I talk about Lauren and Lola. But she has never once asked me to call her Mom. She loves bringing up the stuff with my real mom, because for her, it ties everything up in a nice little package. It gives an explanation for why I am the way I am, because if theres one thing adults love, even more than euphemisms, its the concept of cause and effect. If Alanna and my dad can believe that what happened to my mother is the cause, and my being a Troubled Teen is the effect, then they can avoid the two alternative explanations: (1) that people like me are just born bad for no reason at all; or (2) that