Laurie Halse Anderson

In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda is a 14 year old girl who is struggling to find not only a friend group, but also a friend who will stick by her side, but the year before Melinda was invited to a under age drinking party, and she was raped. She was not safe so she called the police. Melinda's desire to protect herself after she is assaulted does not conform to her peers ideas of what is ¨cool¨ and acceptable and so she is ostracized, experiences severe depression, but forced to understand what true friendship really is.

To start off Melinda is a freshman. The first year of high school. High school is tough, but it becomes extremely tough due to the fact of her having no friends. Plus home is not any

They both know that their daughter will break if they were to split up. To keep in mind absolutely no one knows anything about Melinda's attack, and if her parents were to find out she knows that they would split. On the first day of high school Melinda finds herself alone, along with another new girl named Heather. Heather is a new student hoping to find a popular group of friends. Heather and Melinda set out to find a good group of friends, but finally settle on a group of preppy and rich kids named the Marthas. The girls are not wanted by the group, and now they have really have nowhere to go. They only have each other. Sadly in the beginning half of the book Heather realizes that Melinda is too depressed for her, and not good enough for her. Sadly Heather dumps Melinda leaving her by herself. Consequently Melinda starts to quit school. She goes to the mall multiple times and starts to not care, once she is caught she starts to self harm herself. Melinda becomes severely depressed as shown on page 81... ¨ I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head. ¨ This shows how Melinda just wants to be left alone. Being raped was one of the biggest incidents that affected her mental life plus her social life. On page 61 the text says ¨ I get out of my bed and take down the mirror. I put

Rachel was Melinda's friend all of middle school but she turned out to be a complete jerk to Melinda. Heather was a fake friend who only stuck by her side until she was accepted in a ¨cool¨ group. David Petrakis is a nerd who is almost in every one of Melinda's classes. They grow close mostly because they both have no friends, but he is a true friend. Towards the end of the group Melinda starts to come out to Rachel about why she called the police, but Rachel just got even more upset. Melinda thankfully realizes how bad of a friend Rachel is on page 198 ¨I don't want to be cool. I want to grab her by the neck and shake her and scream at her to stop treating me like dirt. She didn't even bother to find out the truth – what kind of friend is that? ¨ Melinda gets close to her art teacher. Art is the one class that Melinda enjoys because she gets to be with her new friend Ivy. Ivy and David are the only people Melinda has, but that is enough for her. On the first day of school Melinda recalls being the only person sitting alone on page 134.¨ I see a few friends people I used to think were my friends—but they look away. ¨ Positively Melinda has found the two only true friends in her school and starts to become a more optimistic