Girls Like Us

After graduation, "Speddies" (short for special ed) Biddy and Quincy are assigned to live together, helping to cook and clean for well-meaning Miss Lizzy. Quincy also gets a job at a grocery store where, on her first day, she's accosted by a coworker who later rapes her. The teens' slow-to-develop friendship, with small moments and poignant encounters, is believably volatile yet ultimately rewarding.

Although they're both "Speddies" (short for special ed), high school classmates Biddy and Quincy aren't friends. Quincy -- prickly, mistrustful, physically scarred, and left with brain damage after her "crack ho" mother's boyfriend hit her with a brick when she was six -- is a product of the foster care system; Biddy -- angelic, overweight, illiterate, diagnosed with "moderate retardation" -- has been raised by a cruel grandmother who kicks her out immediately after graduation. The two girls, both wards of the state, are assigned to live together, helping to cook and clean for well-meaning (but sometimes way-off-the-mark) Miss Lizzy. Quincy also gets a job at a grocery store where, on her first day, she's accosted by a coworker who later rapes her. Biddy, too, has been brutally raped and was tricked by her grandmother into giving up her baby. "Police or nobody else care what happen to girls like us," the normally sunny Biddy tells Quincy when she finally reveals what occurred. Small moments and poignant encounters throughout the book prove Biddy wrong, and each girl gradually starts to let down her guard. The teens' friendship -- slow to develop but life-altering -- and their relationship with Miss Lizzy are believably volatile yet ultimately rewarding. For most of the book, very short chapters alternate between Biddy and Quincy's first-person narrations. At the end, when Quincy struggles with the decision about whether to speak out or remain silent, she takes over the telling. The book gives memorable voice to underrepresented young women. elissa gershowitz