‘Degrassi’ Saved Me in High School

I was a city girl stuck in a white, upper-middle class suburb — and these kids were my lifeline

Amanda Spike Stepto; Sara Ballingall and Duncan Waugh star in Degrassi Junior High. Photo: Peter Power/Getty Images

Nothing’s worse than being a teenager in Long Island in the early ’90s. Or so I thought, on the first day of junior high school when everyone in a five-mile radius laughed at my outfit and my kinky hair. In Brooklyn, I was cool. Wise. In Valley…