Every time I get bored I jump or run away with no thought at all as to where I am going...."" -- this is Veronica, wholly at loose ends in New York City and now going to a psychiatrist to find the answers. She is fighting her jealousy of her sister Judy, 18 months older than she and -- Ronnie thinks -- too privileged, and she is carrying on an unending battle with her divorced parents -- ""they don't love you for your true self at all.."" while she experiments with changing attitudes and experiences. There is Irvin, an older write who is ready to marry her and take her to Mexico; there is stable, omnipresent Joe who understands her without questioning her; there's Dr. Franklin, the psychiatrist, about whom she changes her mind, and a collection of her friends with whom she can sometimes exchange views. And there is the foolish escapade -- a drive to Ohio -- which ends in an accident that straightens Ronnie out and gives her a beginning philosophy for growing up. The late teen-age in all its flouncings and frettings and frictions is here reported with a feeling for its loneliness, lack of communication and egocentricity, in frank self-portraiture -- but this is not a challenge to The Catcher In The Rye or the current The World of Henry Orient.