Seniors embrace new dreams, face new doubts

The members of the Class of 2004 belong to a generation of teens whose numbers, 33 million and growing, represent the biggest batch of 12- to 19-year-olds since the baby boom.

For the 77 Melrose seniors -- almost one-third of the class -- who play on a fall sports team or march with the school band or unfurl banners in the color guard or yell as football cheerleaders, the last autumn of high school has begun.

As inevitably as the trees of this leafy suburb turn gold every autumn, most seniors at Melrose High spend the fall preparing entries for the Great American College Sweepstakes.

While 110 seniors, 45 percent of the class of 2004, landed on first-quarter honor rolls, some students struggle to recover from failing one or more courses.

Half of the class of 2004 adds paid work to homework. They take jobs to buy cars and clothes and cellphones and pizza, to fund hobbies, to save for college, and to fill time.

For all the rebellion of adolescence, the chafing for privacy and life outside the home, surveys find most teens say they get along with their parents. Yet as most teens and parents can attest, their interactions are not always smooth.

Tony Colella, wearing a blue shirt from the carwash where he works part time, cradles his guitar onstage while his childhood friend Dave Crespo introduces the song "Killing Amy." "This song," Crespo says, "is about drug addiction."

When Amanda Kotkowski and Christina Carucci step onto an Orange Line train at Oak Grove one brisk afternoon, they appear to be just a couple of chatty teenagers on a jaunt to Harvard Square. Really, they are young women, just turned 18, freshly minted adults embarking on a mission.

Mark Fallon and Alana Margolis lean into the conversation at a friend's birthday party, sitting so close that he gently drapes his hand across her knees. Their fingers touch.

The morning of the day she'll graduate from Melrose High School, Christina Carucci, clad in red cap and gown, clutching the farewell address she will soon deliver, walks into the gymnasium staging area and groans.