Boys and Girls Screaming

Most teens would envy Ever, her brother, Jericho, and her best friend, Candace. Their wealthy families have fancy houses with servants, they go horseback riding in Florida and skiing in Europe, and they take their summer getaway cottages for granted. But their wealth and privilege don’t mean they make it through adolescence unscathed.

Candace, now 17, was adopted by white parents after her birth mother abandoned her at the age of five. Her devoted parents provide her with a privileged life and work hard to understand her reality as a black child, but, when her birth mother tries to reconnect, Candace can’t push the angry memories away anymore.

Candace’s best friend, Ever, is whip-smart, confident and tightly bonded with her loving parents, but her mental equilibrium is thrown off kilter when her father dies of a heart attack and her mother has a stroke. Furious at the universe, Ever can’t process her trauma and sinks into depression.

Ever’s shy younger brother, Jericho, struggles to live up to his older sister and handle his crush on her best friend. He muses, “When you’re living the type of life where you can get anything you want, anything you want gets old really quickly”, and a slide into the “pharm party” scene provides Jericho with an escape from his boredom and feelings of inadequacy.

Driven to act, Ever starts a group talk session for kids like her. “We’re all here because we’re dealing with something fucked up in our lives,” she tells the other teens at the first meeting of BAGS. “Or maybe we’re not dealing with it.” The group members bond over their shared trauma and lean on each other as they begin to heal. But Ever struggles with a family secret she believes she can’t share, even with the group she started. As truths trickle out and Ever begins to lose her grip on where she belongs, the BAGS step in to help her find a way past her pain.

In Boys and Girls Screaming, Toronto author Kern Carter shows that wealth is no protection against anxiety, depression and family dysfunction. In alternating voices of Candace and Jericho, readers see the pain caused by the emotional wrench of growing up and the challenge of dealing with life’s curve balls. While readers don’t hear Ever’s voice until the epilogue, her smouldering resentment against fate comes out in her interactions with the two narrators, and readers watch her unraveling from a distance. Occasional haughtiness from the poor rich kids is often eyebrow-raising. Ever, for example, claims only broken people dream, and poverty is a tragedy: “Because God knows tap water is disgusting and travelling to a different continent four times a year should be everyone’s right.” But, by focusing on well-off protagonists, the author also demonstrates that more money is no guarantee of happiness. This is no Cinderella story; characters must work hard for their redemption.

Carter effectively captures the sometimes-arrogant adolescent voices of his characters, taking readers down the tortured paths of thought that teens often travel. Candace and Jericho are particularly convincing, both fully aware of their privilege but feeling guilty that they can’t move past unresolved events. Ever is somewhat less convincing as her extraordinary talents and tortured secret set her apart from her peers. But the complicated bonds between the young people are deep and genuine.

With unusual comparisons, quick dialogue and realistic teen language, Carter’s Boys and Girls Screaming leaves readers ultimately hopeful that connecting and speaking out can help young people begin to deal with trauma.