The Waeburn Pluralistic School netted its fair share of celebrity offspring. Classes were capped at fifteen, students were not allowed to use coloring books (they inhibited creative thinking), and the dining-hall cuisine, baked by one volunteer mother, was entirely organic.

In a school of 512, even among those children of stars whose faces recalled a mash-up of their recognizable parents, the Oswegos netted stares. At age twenty-three, their father, Zed, had, with the swift motion with which other fathers unzipped parkas, drawn a twelve-inch imitation-Medieval pewter sword down the pale stomach of a live sow, exposing innards to a sold-out stadium. Having a teenage rebel for a father bestowed the Oswegos with an innate reputation--they were not to be messed with. And yet how difficult, how unfair, it was, to have a father so difficult to one-up. The three could only rebel in so many ways.

Leona, the eldest, having graduated just two years prior, had been pointedly clever, industrially studious, and made it a point not to be associated with a father who at age 20, had dropped out of a small community college in Northampton, Massachusetts. In music class, when handed a recorder, she failed to elicit the correct sound. The shrill, chirpy squeaks that after three weeks of half-hearted practice she managed to eek out could be heard ricocheting down the shining linoleum halls like the strained, peachy notes of a cat birthing its first litter. A stab at Chorus fared no better. She was a low mutterer, hidden in the third row behind Mario D'Ambrosio (the only boy) and an overweight Chinese girl that the horrible pack of boys behind her called, "The Asian Tiger." When called out by the frustrated conductor as to whether she truly knew the lyrics to "Little Drummer Boy," and asked to solo her rendition--Leona failed. The pianist reached her cue, and Leona Oswego chimed in, pitch-perfect, with the lyrics, "Watermelon watermelon Scooby dooby doo." She was not asked to return the following quarter, and spent the period in total segregation in the elective "Winter Sports," where she sat out on pick-up basketball games, coloring the thick wedge of her sneakers with the white-board erase pen she'd been given to keep the score.

What Leona was good at--was very good at--was arguing. Around the school, she had made a name for herself by giving frequent, rousing, angry speeches at town meetings the leader of a philosophy club that met weekly. The club was poorly attended. Toby was a co-founder, and brought with him three of his friends. "The Rub-a-Dubs," Leona called them to her mother, leaning forward on the kitchen island, picking at a snack, for something about them reminded her of the types in the children's song about some lone men, lost at sea in a piece of domestic equipment. These were the boys who, in high school, seemed only to buck and bray in social waves. They were forty-year-olds in seventeen-year-olds bodies, and all would go on to the Ivies--Princeton, Princeton, Yale--as she thought back on it, where, though she fell out of touch quickly, they would surely have similarly out-of-place girlfriends with whom they'd talk politics. But before all that, in High School, there was no one for them--a sea, and then there was Leona, the first girl to be half decent. Despite her frowsy dresses, her mushroom earrings, her pointed gestures away from makeup, Leona found she could not live in a world without boys' attention, and found she could easily convince herself that they were all in love with her. This was enough to get by.

Leona Oswego's previous teachers were disappointed when confronted with the second Oswego--one year younger, the shy and brooding Jareth. Mrs. Henry, particularly, an obsessive who taught English, Rhetoric, and a period (for fun) of French would often wonder aloud why he wasn't as outspoken as that sister of his, whose quick, clever essays had gotten the girl into Harvard where she was studying, of all unneccessary things--Greek.

Jareth Oswego was what they called, in the lounge, a dark horse. In over-large, unmarked tee-shirts, the boy was a sitter-out. He was pretty enough to have been popular--he had his famous mother's high, chiseled cheek bones, his father's lanky frame, the over-large blue eyes of two dawdling grandmothers, and the mussy, tousled hair of a farm pony. New girls to Waeburn were intrigued and, after a three-minute conversation, disgusted. He was sardonic, sarcastic, biting, and judgmental. He smelled of the sepia scent of pot, top-ramen, the salt of skin. In classrooms, he quickly ducked into corners, set up on his desk his binders and notebooks, crossed his arms, and tuned out. It was too easy to chalk up any rebellion on Jareth's part to the desire to be known apart from his sister. He simply saw High School in a way she had not--as a place where trying, in all its forms, was not appreciated. As a place where, whatever happened, was not part of the real world and would not have any ramifications.

What he was good at, he was good at. Jareth Oswego was good at music. He could understand quickly what did and what did not sound good. He picked up instruments as a good cook picks up tips. This was not surprising--he had the genes of his father to thank--and he did not give as much energy into band class, orchestra, and chorus (he sang, as well) as he would have another Waeburn student with his talents (the children of Judy xxx xnad xxxx were all five of them excellent at piano).

One Wednesday, over the sub-sandwiches delivered to the teacher's lounge, Mr. Gardner, the composition teacher who made it a point to wear each day a bow-tie, surprised his peers by telling them that the boy turned out to be particularly adept at playwrighting. Jareth, he protested, had style, had an ear. Other one-acts had concerned teenaged suicide, the use of a dead bird as a symbol for a dead relationship, a grandfather going slowly crazy through increasing alzheimers, but Jareth's play had simply been about two kids deciding whether or not to go to 7-11. "The boredom, the fury," Gardner said, picking out the last tomato, "it was all there."

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If Leona despised High Schools' happinesses, and Jareth seemed to float through the world unaware of any of its systems at all, Celia was simply a practical girl. High School, she understood, even at age 15 in the 10th grade, was a landscape of symbols and surfaces. A girl could get ahead and have the most fun by simply being pretty, and so it was to this task that she devoted all of her energies.