He sits, fidgeting impatiently at the agonizing crawl of the primitive modem, the glare of his mother's computer burnishing his cheeks. He's too small for the chair he swivels in, and is thin and awkward after the classic model of the thin and awkward fourteen-year-old boy. He is mostly, but not completely, friendless, and will transfer to a new school in the fall, where a classmate will later remember him as "invisible." His parents have begun to clash more intensely than ever, casting a weary pall over the household. Obsessed with hip-hop, he feels spectacularly out of place amid the...