Two fourteen year old girls, the popular/bitchy Lisa Bellows and the sensible Meredith Oliver, have the misfortune to be present during an armed robbery at a sandwich shop. Lisa is taken away by the masked gunman, Meredith is not. Still, the trauma of the robbery and the effect it has on Meredith almost tear her family apart, coming as it does hot on the heels of her brother sustaining a life changing injury. The characters are solid and believable; you feel for Meredith’s mother with her terrifying anxiety and for Lisa’s mother, with her desperate neediness born of grief. However, Meredith’s frequent flights of fancy, with her imaging she was actually taken with Lisa, are less successful and frequently annoying. In the end we do care about the characters but the ending feels abrupt, unfinished and leaves us hanging in every way. Almost excellent, but just misses the mark.
