Youth in Revolt 2009

Nick Twisp Nick Twisp is a sharp, precocious 14-year-old from Oakland who navigates adolescence with wit beyond his years. He moves through days with his best friend Lefty and a familiar cast of adults—George Twisp, his father, and Estelle Twisp, his mother, who begins dating a truck driver named Jerry. When Jerry’s past purchase of a Chevy Nova for a crew of sailors triggers their revenge, a reckless chain of events erupts, pulling Nick into a world where each decision seems to compound the trouble.

After the sailors’ retaliation, Jerry decides to take a strategic vacation, and the whole group heads to a religious mobile-home camp in Clearlake for a break that quickly spirals into something more complicated.

At Clearlake, Nick meets Sheeni Saunders and his life tilts as he tries to win her affection, even as his actions draw him into a string of crimes — arson, grand theft auto, and other misdeeds — that force him to dodge the police and rethink his own choices.

Desperate to vanish from the authorities, Nick pretends to have gone to India and hides with his sister Joanie before returning with help from a friend in Ukiah, Frank “Fuzzy” DeFalco. He dresses in Fuzzy’s late grandmother’s clothes, adopting the name Carlotta and a reserved, conventional persona that masks his true self.

Back with Sheeni, the relationship deepens when she reveals she knew the truth all along—that it was Nick, not Carlotta. The moment ushers in a secret romance that feels like the bright spark of a difficult year.

Fortune also slips into Nick’s hands when Joanie’s elderly neighbor decides to leave him in her will. After the neighbor’s death, Nick briefly becomes half a million dollars richer, only for his mother’s boyfriend—a corrupt police officer—to seize the money. The financial blow leaves him homeless again as he wrestles with where to stay and what his future could look like.

In a final twist of ingenuity, Nick rebounds with a bold business idea—the wart watch—which captures public imagination and turns the tide on his fortunes, signaling a new chapter where clever schemes meet adolescence and a chance at stability.