Sixteen-year-old Heidi Rosenbloom describes herself as "a klutz." "Short, plump, and insecure," she states in her casual firstperson narration. "A person whose nose is too big and whose eyes are too small. A person with a voice like Woody Allen."

Because she feels so unlovely, she also dresses the part—wearing thrift store clothes and close-cropped hair. She is desperately lonely. Her only real friend has moved away and her divorced parents do not understand Heidi at all. Her mother wants her to be a modern day version of Marilyn Monroe and is obsessed with Heidi's (nonexistent) romances, while her father wants her to be the next Albert Einstein. Jeffrey Collins is a twenty-year-old street entertainer who came to New York from Chicago. Homeless, gay, and adorned with a fur coat and eye makeup, Jeffrey is also "different," but unlike Heidi, he has...