The novel opens with a scene to which any teen can relate. Ace, lingering in the bathroom of his new apartment that he calls "The Pits," stares in the mirror in disbelief at a red, swollen sore on his eye.

He can hardly see over the big yellow lump on his bottom lid. In forty-five minutes, he starts his first day at his new high school.

Horrified by his eye, which had been normal the night before, he dons an eye-patch that he finds in his sister's room to cover up the blemish. Then he leaves his family's three-bedroom apartment on the top floor of Twenty-third Street, for his adventurous first day at Kennedy High.

The action takes place at Kennedy High and in its New York surroundings. The realistic setting typifies New York: living in an apartment, riding the bus to and from school, and dealing with...