Young Addie Downs is lonely. She doesn't know how to make friends. She's kind of an outsider at school. Then a new family moves in across the street and that's how she meets the girl who will become her one and only and her best friend: Valerie Adler. Valerie is tall and thin and her mother doesn't pay much attention to her only child.
Things are good until high school. Because Addie is overweight and Valerie has changed from being a gawky kid to graceful, attractive young woman. She becomes a cheerleader and forms new friendships and starts going to parties and school events. While Addie is still just an outsider and is becoming lonely again. Then Valerie is sexually assaulted by the star football player and she asks Addie not to tell anyone. But Addie doesn't listen and tells her parents. Which causes a big upset which is made even worse when Valerie denies it ever happened.
Addie and Valerie go their separate ways. Valerie moves away but Addie stayed home and inherited her parents' house when they died. Addie gets her weight under control and even has a lover but when the high school reunion comes around, she doesn't attend. Too many bad memories and virtually no good memories of her time in high school. What she doesn't know is that Valerie did attend the reunion and she took revenge on the football player who had raped her back then. She left him naked and bleeding in the venue parking lot after she hit him with her car. Now she is at Addie's front door, begging her for help out of the fix she has gotten herself in.
This was an OK read. Addie is remarkably passive, annoyingly so. She lets people abuse her and take advantage and she never fights back. She lets Valerie back into her life and goes along with her whacky plan, which includes robbing a bank and running off together. I really didn't care much for either character.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
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