What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

Teen book with a modern/contemporary setting, possibly high school.

The narrator/main character was a boy, I think there were three main characters, another boy and a girl, and it might have been a love triangle. The boy was called Owen or Wayne or something similar and wrote graffiti about himself because he wanted someone to say to him that it wasn't true. I think he wrote graffiti saying 'Owen is gay' (or whatever his name was) and something saying 'Owen is an onion'.

I think he might have had some kind of breakdown and possibly decided that the graffiti was true and he was gay after all. It's the onion part that sticks most in my mind! I think there was something about onions having lots of layers but when you peel them away there's nothing in the middle, but that might not be unique to this book.

I read this some time in the 90s.

Still looking for this book! If anyone can point me towards any names/lists of teen/ ya authors from the 80s/90s that I can search through that might help.

A guess - Walls (1980) by Jay Daly?
"Frankie O'Day, an incurable graffiti writer, has to deal with pranksterish friends, an alcoholic father, and a new romance."

It's possible, I will look into it. Thank you for the suggestion.

I wish I could remember more detail about the book.

Be sure to let us know!

I just stumbled across this thread and have the feeling that Writing in Martian (or possibly its sequel) may be the book I'm looking for. It has three friends, one of whom is called Wayne and something about the description is jolting my memory. I have ordered it from Amazon and will see if it is the one! (Fingers crossed)

That's weird - I posted the other thread about Writing in Martian. I remember seeing this post of yours a while back and thinking "I have definitely read that book" but didn't comment because I had no idea what it was. So we may have been looking for the same book from totally different clues :) hope it's what you're looking for!

It was my book! I'm so happy to have found it and solved the mystery after two years. (And to read the book again after twenty years!)

It was definitely Writing in Martian.

Do you guys remember if Wayne was in fact gay?

Details are hard to come by, and I wanted to add this book to the 20th Century YA with LGBT Themes list if so.