I don't think she's a potential Mean Girl per se- she seems like she wouldn't care all that much about high school power games to bother, and she's rarely mean for the sake of it. She sabotages and fights with her father, but that's because of their messed-up family dynamic, not a desire to be cruel. And when she is nasty- like when she threatens the department store manager- it's in the service of a goal of some sort. Like you said, she's more interested in being an adult. That, and I think she's isolated from her classmates- I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems like she's too whimsical and dreamy to connect with them properly, and with too high of a bullshit detector to put up with any kind of pettiness. The reason she bonds with Cooper so well is that he's the same combination of loopy and pragmatic that she is. :P

. . . I have a lot of Thoughts On Audrey. *sheepish*

Now I kind of want a fic set in high school because I'm curious to see where Audrey, Laura, and Donna would've fit, and especially where Shelly would have before dropping out.

Oh, me too! It's unfortunate that the show's twenty years old with a tiny fandom at this point, because I'd really like to see fic exploring the girls and their relationships. This show is so awesome with its variety of female characters, it makes me sad that there isn't more fic for them.