Kids will be kids"" might be the moral here, though bratty, self-centered Victoria, whose only talent seems to be for getting caught, isn't as easy to identity with as Pascal intends her to be. Somehow Victoria, returning home early from a weekend visit after her Aunt discovers her smoking a joint, unconsciously wishes herself back some 30 years to 1944 where she pals around with an even wilder girl named Cici. Minor shoplifting, sneaking cigarettes, and some ruckus in a movie theater soon escalate to full-scale havoc when Cici gets caught trying to buy a purloined science test with money snitched from a USO collection box. Meanwhile Victoria, who first thought she was in a weird, old-fashioned section of Queens, has realized that Cici is really her mother. . . Victoria urges Cici to confess; wakes up--still on the train--to find that Cici was only a dream; and later realizes that her school principal is the same Ted Davis who tried to sell Cici that science test. Although Mother never catches on to what has happened (neither do we, entirely) she and Victoria end up sharing a kind of girlish solidarity. Actually, they're very different: Cici's pranks are high-spirited whereas Victoria's are unrelievedly sad and self-destructive. And like both girls the author enjoys setting up wiggy situations but can't always handle the consequences.