In the summer after ninth grade, my friends and I started hanging around a certain block on the Upper West Side, right near the Burger King. It was a pretty well-known gathering place for a particular group of kids at that time: a casting director for the movie Kids - an extremely bleak but not entirely off-base portrayal of what teenage life was like in New York City in the mid-1990s - actually hung around there and ended up putting a few of our friends in the film. On Friday and Saturday nights, dozens of us would stream in as the sun set, calling out to each other to see what the plan was - because in the time before cell phones you actually had to stop into places to find out what was going on - then use the pay phone on the corner to page friends who hadn't shown up yet. There was a code for "meet at Burger King", but I can't remember what it was.

When we'd gathered a big enough group, we'd wander through Central Park, head over to the East Side to stop into the apartment of someone whose parents were out of town, and then usually end up sitting in the grass outside the Met after night fell, our backs leaned against the slanting glass wall of the Egyptian exhibit, doing our best to get into trouble but mostly only playing game after game of "I Never."

There was this one summer when a girl named Hannah seemed like the center of it all: she had long, dark bangs, wore glitter eye makeup and perfect bellbottoms and her hair in two high, twisted buns on top of her head, and was best friends with the boy I had decided that I was in love with for the moment. She seemed comfortable in a way that I wanted so badly; I never could figure out how to be at rest with myself with too many people around - especially people who I very much wanted to be just like. While we walked in large packs down the cobblestone streets bordering the park, yelling and laughing and shoving each other, I always had the sense that I was hovering somewhere outside of myself, looking in at my awkward way of holding my arms, my spotty skin, my not-quite-right sneakers, and seeing just how much I didn't fit. 

I was once asked who my "style icon" was, and after a bunch of waffling - I'd never been asked that before, and my instant reaction was to say "Audrey Hepburn", because despite the fact that there are few people on the planet whose style resembles mine less, she seems to sort of be a de facto icon - I landed on Kate Hudson.

But you know who it really is?