3:30 P.M. The Basement

By Stacy Perman

As they do most afternoons, the social refugees of Webster Groves find sanctuary underground--in Gene Clifford's basement, a dim cavern that reeks of cigarettes. Here, 16-year-old Gene and his friends have created a study hall-cum-social center. Posters of Pink Floyd, The X-Files and Tori Amos line the walls. Encyclopedias, dictionaries and classics fill the bookshelves. A computer with Internet access lights up the corner. The room is a cocoon, protected from the rest of the student body, from which they feel alienated. "Here I have ready access to all of my friends," says Gene. "And it's not the Crestwood Mall, where I have to deal with people who don't like me without even knowing me."

At school, these kids are known as the Church Step Dirties because they convene after school on the steps of the Christ Lutheran Church, smoking Camels. At Webster, their perceived bad fashion, bad family, bad hygiene or bad attitude evokes disdain from many classmates. "A lot of people look down at us and write us off because of what we look like," says Gene. "They don't even know us."

In Webster's social pecking order, these kids are rock bottom. "We are definitely the outsiders," says junior Adam White, 16. "Not a whole lot of the 'popular' people give us the time of day"--a generalization confirmed by popular senior Adam Wise: "I don't know how to put it...but they don't fit in."

Yet the Dirties "like how they have an identity," observes Webster social studies teacher Jenni Wilson. With it comes a home in Gene's basement and a surrogate parent in Gene's divorced mom, Eileen Stewart, 42, a former computer consultant. Thirteen of the Dirties come to her house five days a week for an informal study program. She knows their class schedules and their family situations. They call her "Mom." But Mom has rules in her basement: no disrespect, cursing, drugs or sex. Their real parents must know where they are, and they must do their homework. Stewart keeps the basement open until 10 on weeknights, midnight on weekends. "They can study here and hang out and be O.K.," she says.

This afternoon, while their classmates are shopping or playing sports, Darrin Cayton, 17, and Gene are in the basement, smoking and riffing on their guitars. Heather Corey, 16, is on the couch, studying. After flunking four classes last semester, Heather has made straight A's this fall, in part through some serious book cracking in Stewart's basement. That probably won't help her make the social A-list at school, but it might do her some good in the years to come.

--S.P.