"How old are you?"
"Seventeen. I mean—I'm going on eighteen." Eighteen was, in fact, eleven months off.
"Have you ever worked before?"
"I've written things."
After a silent moment, during which he glared at me more angrily than ever, he demanded:
"What have you written?"
"Poetry," I said, and stopped because he said again in that lost voice, "My God!"
"What else?"
"I had a story published in The Star," I said. "I've got it here, if you'd like to see it."