Every Last Word

A girl suffers from OCD. She is constantly imagining "dream" situations that are not "real". She has some special tricks she uses to cope. She also regularly sees a therapist.

She hangs with a group of 8 girls that she has known since kindergarten. They all tend to be very superficial valley girls. She gets along well with them and all their superficialities. However, she also is an accomplished swimmer and spends a lot of time in the pool. She feels her "summer self" is more true to herself than the self from the rest of the year.

One day she "meets" a girl near her locker and gets introduced to a secret poetry club. She struggles to fit in. She has to go through many steps (such as apologizing to the leader - a boy she and her friends teased in elementary school due to his sutter.) She is eventually accepted and falls in love with the boy. (But not until spending time obsessively stalking details of his former girlfriend.) 

She goes through many challenges and finds out the truth about the girl that she met. (She was not real, but based on a teenager that committed suicide years ago.) 

The lead character struggles with the twin challenges of dealing with a mental illness and feeling different from her friend group - all while trying to fit in. It is hard to be yourself when that may cause you to lose friends that you are attached to. It is even more challenging when your mind is forcing you down certain tracks. The professional help can be useful, but you also don't want others to know you are seeing them.