Has anyone read anything by the author E.R. Frank? Two of his books (maybe the only two, I'm not sure) are Friction and Life Is Funny. Both are exellant, I recommend them to everyone. Friction takes place in a school called Forest Alternative, and is from the prospective of a just-barely teen girl. I'm not going to go in-depth because I don't want to ruin the plot, but it deals with the topic of sexual abuse and just generally growing up and realizing that everyone isn't innocent. I just finished it literally minutes ago. It's incredibly realistic--we're all young enough to remember being 12 and confused. Life Is Funny is a series of vignettes from students in an inner-city high school. It feels a bit chaotic when you first start reading it because there's so many different characters, but it's really engrossing. My only complaint was the ending didn't really feel conclusive, but such is the case in many "slice of life" stories.