At the beginning of the story fifteen-year-old Connie's dissatisfaction with her dull, ordinary family and her strategies to escape her parents' notice as she goes about her pursuit of adventure, petting with unknown boys in parked cars, are presented in quick, convincing strokes. The mall and the hamburger joint are as vividly drawn as her interactions with her mother that, in their "pretense of exasperation," see-saw from basic mutual sympathy to pointless, almost childish antagonism (38). Connie's mixture of feelings about her mother typify a teenager's combination of being satisfied with safe dependence and a desire for liberty. At times she even wonders if, since "her mother is so simple" it is "maybe cruel to fool her so much" (38). And, in light of the revelation of the terror that lie
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