I photographed this young man on the first day of school in the fall of 1974. He was in the ninth grade then. He told me he was playing hooky because he wanted to get into a private school. Looking back on my notes, he seemed to flit from subject to subject. He jumped from talking about his friends to how the dope dealers would hunt you down if you turned them in. He also said he wanted to be a policeman because “they make good money.” But in the next breath he said, he “wouldn’t turn my friends in even if they were dealing because you can’t turn on your friends.”
