Seventeen-year-old "tough girl" Chantel Mitchell catches the IRT subway from her Brooklyn housing estate to the Manhattan speciality food shop where she has a Saturday job, afterwards going window shopping with her friend Natete. At home, her parents constantly bicker, and she dreams of escaping it all, graduate high school early and go to college and study medicine. At school, she gets into trouble with her "big mouth" when, during a lesson about the Holocaust, she demands her teacher provide more "afrocentric" topics. Out of school, she and her girlfriends hang out in the park and natter about sex and Aids - not always informatively - and the latest designer trainers and the other fashion gear to wear - altogether much more knowledgeably. At a party, she meets Tyrone and learns he has a jeep. Abandoning the party, and her boyfriend Gerard, she goes for a ride with him. Soon she is asking Natete to cover for her with her family while she spends nights with Tyrone. However, when they first make love, he refuses to wear a condom. The inevitable happens and she becomes pregnant; however she does not qualify for welfare. When she tells Ty he leaves her, only to contritely return and give her money for an abortion. However, Chantel decides to treat her pregnancy as a "dream" - it isn't really happening - and instead uses the money to buy a girdle and take Natete shopping. When Ty finds out what has happened to the money, he confronts her and angrily tells her to face reality and make a decision.