“The Mosts,” an edgy, readable story, gives fresh power to the insight that being young may pass but high school goes on forever.

Often, self-image and self-esteem are shaped there, molded by teenage boys focused on sports and girls who accept and reject classmates as ruthlessly as they shop for clothes. Maine novelist Melissa Senate, author of “Theodora Twist,” has her eye on that scene and re-creates it for us at fictional “Freeport Academy” in its namesake hometown.

No doubt teenage readers will find much in the book achingly familiar. The struggle to fit in at school. The urge to be welcomed by the “right crowd.” The never-ending effort to be “cool.” The hunger for recognition. On and on. The pressures are there, and they mount.

Senate tells her story through a likable heroine, a sensitive sophomore named Madeline Echols. Madeline, who lives on a large dairy farm where students regularly “intern,” had been an all-but-invisible student for most of her school days. But her two-year relationship with a popular boyfriend, athlete Thom Geller, has changed that. It has propelled her into the “in” crowd and an enviable identity as “most popular” in her class.

As the story opens, Madeline is back for a new year of school after spending a month with an aunt who lives in Rome. She comes home with more than new clothes. She has achieved an easy self-confidence, and looks forward to a year with a boyfriend she loves and all the glory of high school spread out before her. But Madeline’s high school mosaic is coming apart. Thom’s family is moving to California. He’s going away. And Madeline fears their relationship will not survive the separation.

Even so, Thom’s absence quickly begins to affect Madeline in ways she had not foreseen. Her status among “The Mosts” is rumbled by it. Where she had once been one of the cozy group of leaders, she is now regarded as a potential rival for the boyfriends of others. No one subscribes to this threat more than Caro, the leader of the pack, who fears Madeline may now attract the boy she herself is pursuing. Caro pulls out all the stops to discourage her onetime friend and to force her to the edges of the group.

Indeed, it is a discouraging aspect of “The Mosts” that, even as girls dominate center stage, males seem to hold the real power in their world. Boyfriends — and particularly the “right” kind of boyfriend — influence whether a new girl, or even a returning one, is welcomed by the reigning “Mosts.” All this at a time when adult women are running on their own to be elected senators and governors, even president, their ambitions not left to wither in high school.

As you can probably guess, at any school where there are “The Mosts” — “most popular,” “most hilarious,” “most hot,” etc. — there is apt to be a “Most Not” list as well. And that cruel pattern holds here.

A handful of young people eager to avoid the social embalming that the negative list represents come to Madeline for help. Their reasons differ, but they seek her guidance in navigating the tricky path to acceptability. Madeline is willing to help. She is trying to raise money for a plane ticket to California, and here is the way she can do it. She digs in with the group, which includes her sister, a Cinderella-like newcomer, a young man named Joe and a girl who’s suffered from the frizzies for years. Soon Madeline has them in shape for new lives in high school. She even has two of them in love.

Madeline also has a hard-won bit of self-realization. She has become her own “Most Me,” which she tells us quietly “was all I wanted to be.” Somebody whistle the school song. This girl is graduating.

Melissa Senate has given us a lively read. 

Nancy Grape writes book reviews for The Maine Sunday Telegram.

 

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