High School Hell

The protagonist of Sam Lipsyte's Home Land is the type of high school student who is ignored by the faculty and administration and berated by much of the student body. After graduation, this student turns out to do...absolutely nothing.
Lewis Miner is in his early 30's. He works at his father's restaurant busting tables and hangs out with his childhood friend, Gary, who may have been hypnotized into making false accusations of how his parents sexually abused him as a child. His mother is dead and the only woman in his life, Gwendolyn, may have lusted after her late brother.
Miner is a 1989 graduate of the East Vally High School in New Jersey. Frustrated over hearing about how well other classmates are doing in the alumni newsletter, Catamount Notes, he decides to tell just how fucked up things have been for him since graduation.
This has angered his former high school principal and a former female classmate, who views the Catamount Notes as her own baby.
After reading this book, you might recognize some of the people you went to high school with. Old classmates still call Lewis his nickname of Teabag even after fifteen years. What is ironic is that Lewis thinks he's moved on while all his high school classmates are still living in the past, but Lewis' constant updates to the newsletter just show that he hasn't gotten over it either. When one of his updates is censored and rewritten to sound like a generic update, Lewis gets frustrated rather than just shrug it off.
Lewis still harks on why the school mascot is the catamount when they went to school in a valley. I think there is a national law that you got to have a school every twenty-thirty square miles or so that has a mascot that is part of the wild cat family. The school ten miles from where I grew up was called the tigers. I lived in a town that had panthers as their school mascot. Two schools within a thirty mile radius from me have tigers as their school mascot.
Lipsyte's book does seem to be a little quirky toward the end where the classmates meet at a Togethering, a psuedo reunion. His characters turn more into cariacatures rather than real people.
However, he tells us that we never let go of those four years when we were just kids, no matter how hard we try.
We all hang on to something that we should just let go.