Harmless (review)

Anna's trying not to be left behind by her best friend, Emma; Emma's getting a taste of the popular life with newcomer Mariah; Mariah, shut out of a home centered on her young stepsister and the family reputation, is looking for rebellion and external validation. Led by Mariah, the three freshmen start hanging out—and, for Mariah and Emma, having sex—with older guys from the local public school; when an evening's outing looks set to reveal their lies to their parents, the trio concocts a story of attack and near-rape by an unknown man near the river. Soon things spin out of control: the girls become school heroes (well, Mariah and Anna are heroes, while Emma is the lucky girl spared victimization), and the police round up a man they suspect in another girl's disappearance as well as in the nonexistent crime, hoping the girls will be able to put him away. Reinhardt's careful craftsmanship lifts this above the standard morality drama. Her three narrators are believably different in their approach to the situation, and there's particularly thoughtful exploration of Anna's blossoming under the attention and resistance to yielding her newfound importance ("I'd kissed a senior and now we were spending half of English class talking about me instead of some boring book"), while Emma is still struggling with her regret about having drunken and not entirely intentional sex, a situation the false report mirrors even as it disguises. Readers will be absorbed in the drama, and they'll find much to discuss in the way one seemingly small lie spins into destruction.