Book excerpt: Bernadette is 16. She is pregnant. Her boyfriend doesn't know. Much more importantly than all that, however, she will soon be auditioning for her high school's production of Genet's The Maids. As she stands on the cusp of adulthood, she must learn to untangle the real world outside from the thorns of her imagination. It's a bitter winter night when 16-year-old Bernadette, an aspiring short story writer, boards a train to New York City carrying her notebook and important news for her boyfriend. What follows is a searing and poetic coming-of-age story as Bernadette intimately shares her encounters along the way and the devastating result of her visit, a journey punctuated by both a need to be heard and an aching desire to disappear.