Friction

Simon is the coolest teacher anywhere. Forest Alternative is lucky to have him. When Stacy arrives -- a new kid with secrets, gleaming hair, and a tongue ring -- she sizes up Simon and agrees, adding: "He is a total babe."

True.

What Stacy says later about Alex and Simon after the class overnight camp out is not true, but looks as if it could be. Alex herself begins to wonder what's real, what's not. But she can't confide in her parents. They'd freak. And, after all, she does love Simon.

Listening to Stacy though, everyone else is totally suckered -- most painfully Alex's best buddy and sort-of boyfriend, Tim. "Why were you hugging him?" Tim wants to know, and it's hard to explain. Simon did not do what Stacy claims!

Did he? Could he?

At age twelve the truth seems hopelessly complicated. And it gets even more so after Alex makes a surprise visit to Stacy's house. There, she finds out the answer to one terrible question, only to discover another, far worse.

E. R. Frank's novel America received praise from all major reviewers (for a sampling, see the back of this jacket). Her first novel was Life Is Funny, winner of the Teen People Book Club NEXT Award for YA Fiction and was also a top-ten ALA 2001 Quick Pick.

A social worker, Frank lives with her husband in Montclair, New Jersey.