Transitions are a significant aspect of the American educational system and therefore of interest to educational anthropology. Based on a two-year ethnographic study, this article explores the transitions between grade school and junior high and between childhood and teenhood for white girls in a privileged suburban community, and examines why the girls engaged in "problem" behavior as they made their way through these transitions. The interpretation contends that girls were negotiating a culturally ambiguous relationship between school type and life stage and used trouble as a ritual action in this tacit rite of passage. The gendered meaning of trouble has implications for how school control policies impact girls during these transitions.