On a wet, blustery April morning, mist blowing sideways across the docks marking the lower end of Union Street on the Brooklyn waterfront, 17-year-old Alice Warren-Gregory races down the steps from her family’s third-floor apartment a little after 5:30 a.m. Clutching a calculator and a copy of ”The Great Gatsby,” she hurries up the block in the predawn darkness to catch a waiting B71 bus. As we step on board, the driver says, ”Good morning, Alice,” and closes the door.

”I got four hours of sleep the night before, and I went to bed at 1 a.m. last night,” Alice says grumpily, settling into a seat and opening her book. We have barely gone a block, and she is already fretting about how far behind she is. ”I was supposed to write my essay on ‘Song of Solomon’ for English, but I didn’t get to it,” she says. ”I had to do my laundry.” The topics of this early-morning conversation — laundry, homework, her guitar lessons, the boring party in Manhattan over the weekend — form little tiles in the typical mosaic of teenage ennui.

Read more: The Smart Set — The New York Times Magazine

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