Nation

Teen Terror

Lucky's parents divorced bitterly when he was eight, and he became the caretaker of both his mother and his younger brother. To deal with his unhappiness, Lucky turned first to food and ballooned to 160 lbs. in the fifth and sixth grades. At 13, he substituted drugs. Eventually, he turned to theft and street violence. "I've broken all my knuckles," says the youth, now 16. "I get into blank rages where I don't even remember what happened."

Slow Suicide

Scott felt like a misfit at age 11, when his mother's remarriage took him from a lower-middle-class area to a wealthy suburb. Miserable, he began to drink and take drugs, buying $5 hits of the coolant Freon from a warehouse worker in the morning and then loading up on marijuana at his school during lunchtime. "It was like I was actually killing myself indirectly," says Scott, 18, who with treatment has been sober for three years.

Blacking Out

Sara's life fell apart when she started high school last year. A straight-A student in grade school, she began skipping classes, dating a physically abusive older student and wearing only black. By winter, she was trying to kill herself. Sara, who says she felt rejected by her parents, calmly recites her attempts: "Four or five times I took pills. Once I almost slit my wrists, and I tried to hang myself once." With therapy, Sara, at 15, sees a future. One sign: she is wearing colors again.