A gripping novel full of unpredictable turns told in the voices of three girls who must learn to live with the lies they tell.
There was a man. He had a knife. He attacked us down by the river. It was just a harmless little lie. Anna, Emma, and Mariah concoct a story about why they are late getting home one Friday night—a story that will replace their parents' anger with concern. They just have to stand by it. No matter what. What happens next challenges their friendship, their community, their relationships with their families, and their sense of themselves. Suddenly the police are involved, and the town demands that someone be punished for threatening their children. And then there is the man who is arrested and accused of a crime that never happened. What happens in this novel shows the harm one lie can do. Praise for Dana Reinhardt "An enormously talented writer."—KLIATT, starred review
This is what I know about the truth: the farther you get away from it, or it gets away from you, the harder it is to tell.
If only I had told the truth that night.
Life would have gone on. Life has gone on, but everything is different. I wish more than anything that I could go back to that night, walk in my front door, and undo everything we did.
This is the story of what really happened. This is the truth.
I knew Mariah was hanging out with a guy from the local high school. Everyone knew. That's what it's like when you go to a school as small as ours. I wasn't one of the girls Mariah would peel down her turtleneck and show her hickeys to, but I'd heard about them. I'd heard they were the size of golf balls and as dark as overripe plums. I wished she would show them to me. I wished she would pull me into the bathroom and block the door with her black Converse high-top and say "Check this out" and I'd gasp and then we'd both be late to our next class. But Mariah never gave me the time of day.
It was Emma who first brought me into Mariah's orbit. They were assigned a scene from Romeo and Juliet. They had to rehearse it and then perform it for their English class. Emma was playing Romeo because there's a shortage of boys in our school. Maybe that's why Mariah was hanging out with the guy from the public high school, although really, I think she was just trying to be different. To stand out. To be talked about. And probably to get away from all the boys in gray slacks and navy V-neck sweaters we're trapped with day after day after day.
I don't think anybody really knew what "hanging out" meant, but most of us chose to believe it meant "having sex," and that gave Mariah even more of an edge than she already had. It's hard to stand out in a school where everyone wears the same uniform and everyone lives in the same community and everyone's parents work either at the college or for CompuCorp. But Mariah managed to stand out. She was pretty, but not girly. Smart, but not a teacher's pet. Boys liked her. Girls wanted to be like her. There is no other way to say it: she was the coolest person in school, or at the very least, she was the coolest person in the freshman class.
So when Emma was assigned to be her Romeo she couldn't stop talking about Mariah this and Mariah that. Finally she invited me to her house one afternoon when Mariah was coming over to work on their scene.
Emma's been my best friend since third grade, when she moved here from the city. Her parents are literature professors at the college. They live only two blocks away and her older brother, Silas, was a senior who somehow managed not to look dorky in our school uniform. He wanted to go to Columbia next year and even though I knew Columbia was only an hour and fifteen minutes away by train, I still secretly hoped he wouldn't get in.
When I got to Emma's house, they were down in the basement, drinking lemonade and eating Oreos. They'd both changed into jeans and Mariah was wearing a tank top and right away I could see the hickeys. They looked like they ached, like if I reached my hand over and touched one, she'd wince.
I sat down in a beanbag chair and threw my backpack on the floor. My plaid skirt felt itchier than usual. Why didn't I think to change my clothes?
"Hey, Anna Banana," Mariah said, and she dipped her Oreo into her lemonade.
Anna Banana. It's what my dad used to call me when I was a little kid and no matter how hard I try I can't get him to break the habit. But for some reason, coming from Mariah, I kind of...
Reviews
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Anna, Emma, and I [Mariah] made up this little story that grew and grew and grew. . . . The result is that their teachers and schoolmates, the police, the mayor, and the community are enraged about a purported attack on three ninth-graders. The teenagers lied about warding off a rapist in a park to cover their presence at a seniors' beer-soaked party. The three narrators create strikingly distinct characters who strive to pursue normal lives amid the excruciating tension of an escalating police investigation. Their lie generates fame, dates, and popularity for two of the girls as the other sinks into depression. A closing author interview discusses difficult issues like lying, rape, and assault in teen fiction. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
School Library Journal...
"Unpredictability and suspense will keep readers turning the pages. . . . They will appreciate how well the characters are developed and how . . . lies can have far-reaching and devastating consequences."
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