Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Mallory is a relative newcomer to the popular seventh-grade set, and though she sometimes feels pangs of unease at the harsh opinions held by queen bees Tess and Reagan, she swats those doubts away easily and becomes something of an artist at spinning introspective justifications. Her wobbly ethical balance tips, though, when her mother arranges a meeting with new neighbor Jennifer Chan, who has recently lost her father to illness. Jennifer's plainspoken confidence intrigues Mallory, especially when she holds forth on alien life she staunchly believes in. This outré belief is a non-starter for middle school success, and Mallory knows she needs to distance herself from Jennifer to maintain her elite status; soon her own behavior starts to mirror that of Tess and Reagan, which escalates into a mean girls confrontation. Shortly afterward, Jennifer goes missing, and as Keller reels out and reveals a widening circle of culpability, readers uncomfortably observe how the bullying was enabled not only by perpetrators' actions, but by spontaneous bad decisions made by kids on the fringe of the drama. In an illuminating author's note Keller discloses, "I was the girl in the bathroom—the girl pressed up against the sinks," and that in her effort to come to terms with that ugly episode, she contacted and conversed with several of her bullies years later, discovering private motivations and, in some cases, the better persons they now prove themselves to be. By setting the victim, the missing Jennifer, into the narrative background, Keller directs the flood light onto Mallory and company and aims responsibility (and possible redemption) right where it belongs.