Jennifer Chan (Chinese American) is obsessed with extraterrestrial life, a fascination she shared with her late dad. Biracial (Korean/white) Mallory Moss, always worried about fitting in, may not believe in aliens from other worlds but admires her new neighbor Jennifer’s ability to be herself even as she distances herself from Jennifer once the school year begins. Mallory knows Jennifer won’t have an easy time at their middle school if she shares her belief in alien life with others. This book opens well into the school year, when Jennifer has run away. Mallory feels sick as well as scared, sure of the reason why Jennifer is missing: Mallory’s best friend, Reagan, began the year treating Jennifer in ways that she claims were “nice” but were cruel in both intent and reality; this evolved into a concerted effort to belittle Jennifer. Anxious Mallory not only didn’t say “stop,” but participated. The story moves back and forth between the past, revealing more about these and other characters and their relationships, and the present, with Mallory determined to find Jennifer, involving her former best friend, Ingrid, in helping her unravel the mystery. This novel illuminates feelings, behavior, and dynamics among its middle-school-age characters with sharp and incisive honesty, offering nuanced glimpses of complicated lives and relationships. But those complications never become tropes or excuses for inexcusable cruelty as it probes anxiety, jealousy, pain, grief, indifference, and the beginnings of forgiveness. (Ages 9-12)

In her first novel since winning the Newbery Medal for When You Trap a Tiger, Tae Keller offers a gripping and emotional story about friendship, bullying, and the possiblity that there's more in the universe than just us.

Sometimes middle school can make you feel like you're totally alone in the universe...but what if we aren't alone at all?

Thanks to her best friend, Reagan, Mallory Moss knows the rules of middle school. The most important one? You have to fit in to survive. But then Jennifer Chan moves in across the street, and that rule doesn’t seem to apply. Jennifer doesn’t care about the laws of middle school, or the laws of the universe. She believes in aliens—and she thinks she can find them.

Then Jennifer goes missing. Using clues from Jennifer’s journals, Mallory goes searching. But the closer she gets, the more Mallory has to confront why Jennifer might have run . . . and face the truth within herself.

Tae Keller lights up the sky with this insightful story about shifting friendships, right and wrong, and the power we all hold to influence and change one another. No one is ever truly alone.