The article presents a study of the language of Serhiy Hrydin’s story “Not Like That”, dedicated to the personal, rather typical, story of our contemporary – a teenager who overcomes numerous situations of bullying in the school environment, among his peers. The subject of analysis are lexical and phraseological units that create a language model with two implementation plans. The first is the formation of a verbal image of the socio-cultural environment in which teenagers interact, revealing their identity. The second is an outline of the socio-psychological background that causes bullying of a teenager and generally the emergence and consolidation of bullying as a norm of behavior among school youth. The article emphasizes the special stylistic load of colloquial vocabulary and phraseology, elements of jargon (youth, criminal, subcultures), slang in the language of teenagers, teachers, and their parents. Examples of figurative and stylistic loading of lexical and phraseological communiques are given. Particular attention is paid to the intertextuality of quotes from the song lyrics of the “Boombox” group, in particular, key words reflecting the mood, language thinking of the main character who resists bullying while preserving his “self” are singled out. The writer argues for the preservation of personal identity first of all, since the main emphasis is on the provocative language behavior and activities of both representatives of school youth and mentors, which create the background for the generation and maintenance of bullying in the educational sphere.