Every Last Word

Author: Tamara Ireland Stone

If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling at me right now. Samantha McAllister looks like the rest of the popular girls in her high school class, but beneath her straight hair and flawless makeup, Samantha hides a secret her friends will never understand. Sam suffers from raging OCD and is drained by a series of dark thoughts and fears she can't get rid of. She rethinks every step she takes, every thought she has, and every word that leaves her lips, making her daily life hell on earth. To make matters worse, her lifelong friends turn into mean girls once Sam makes a mistake in choosing her clothes, her food, or the boy she dates. Yet, Sam knows it would be truly foolish to abandon her most popular friends at school who protect her, so when Sam meets Caroline, with her high sense of humor and lack of style, she is forced to keep their relationship a secret, just as she does with her weekly visits to her psychiatrist. Caroline introduces Sam to the poetry group who gather in a particular corner of the school, a hidden room that houses a loving group of outcasts who are generally ignored by the rest of the students. Sam is immediately drawn to them, and in particular, to a guitar-playing boy with a talent for poetry, thus discovering a whole new side of her personality. Over time, she begins to feel "normal" more than ever with her mean, popular friends... that is, until she finds a new reason to doubt her sanity and everything dear to her heart.