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In high school, my friends and I always had this sneaking suspicion that other people were having more fun than we were. Now don't get me wrong; we packed some wild times into our nights at the local diner. The adrenaline rush we got from stealing that saltshaker-now that was living. But every once in a while, it seemed like maybe-just maybe-some people's adventures didn't begin and end with a short stack.

Had we been able to fast forward to 2006 to read Janice Erlbaum's Girlbomb: a Halfway Homeless Memoir, our suspicions would have been confirmed. We would have fumed with jealousy, indignant that the teenage Erlbaum, while negotiating squalid squats and seedy nightclubs in New York City, never once had to turn to multi-flavored pancakes syrups for entertainment.

Fed up with her abusive stepfather and her flaky mother, Erlbaum runs away from home at 15, bouncing from a violent and chaotic Times Square homeless shelter to a dreary group home on the Upper West Side. To escape from the joyless daily realities of life in the system, she attaches herself to a crowd of partiers at her bleak and lawless Chelsea High School, where even the drama teacher, who casts Erlbaum as the lead in the school musical, doesn't seem to have the energy to rescue her. And we never really trust Erlbaum's friends, who care more about scoring coke and getting into clubs than they do about one another. When it comes to navigating through the haze of acid trips, addict boyfriends and the turmoil of her family, Erlbaum is completely on her own.

The likelihood that you're going to see your own adolescence mirrored in Erlbaum's is pretty slim. I mean, were you scoring coke at Danceteria? I don't think so. I think you were probably more like me, meaning baddest-ass case scenario, you were drinking Jaeger out of a Fruitopia bottle behind the Cumberland Farms in New Rochelle. But here's the thing: We do empathize with Erlbaum. Throughout all her gritty adventures, Erlbaum is clear-headed, perceptive and vulnerable-and it's those qualities that keep us rooting for her till the end.

Author reads and answers Q&A March 16, Barnes & Noble, 4 Astor Pl. (at Astor Place), 212-420-1322; 7, free.