An important quote from Just as Long as We're Together is “Sometimes I feel grown up and other times I feel like a little kid. I seem to be more than one person.”

What's important about this quotation is that it tells us a lot about Stephanie, what kind of person she is, and what kind of problems she's having in her life.

Like many young people her age, she feels as if she's neither one thing nor the other: neither a child nor completely an adult. She gets this feeling often. On one such occasion, she's sitting in the kitchen with her friend Alison, eating doughnuts. Before long, the two are playing with Stephanie's old Barbie dolls, which she hasn't seen since fourth grade.

All very childlike, one might think. And yet it isn't very long before Stephanie starts feeling like a grown-up by asking Alison what it feels like to be adopted. This precipitates a conversation about their respective parents that is certainly much more adult than playing with dolls.

It's this ability of Stephanie to slip easily between the child and the adult in her that makes her feel like she's two different people.