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Elizabeth Scott is the author of eight young adult novels, including BLOOM, PERFECElizabeth Scott is the author of eight young adult novels, including BLOOM, PERFECT YOU, SOMETHING, MAYBE and STEALING HEAVEN. While her latest novel, THE UNWRITTEN RULE, centers on messy love triangles and the difficulties of falling for a guy who's "off limits," she joins us today to talk about a different sort of heartache --- the kind that occurs when you lose your best friend.


If there is one thing that matters in high school --- and for your whole life --- it is friendships.

My latest novel, THE UNWRITTEN RULE, is about a girl, Sarah, who falls for her best friend Brianna’s boyfriend, Ryan, but it’s about more than wrestling with feelings for a guy that you know you shouldn't have. A lot of the book deals with friendship, the kind of lifelong friendship that means the world to you. . .and what happens when you realize that maybe it isn’t what you think it is.

That maybe your best friend isn’t your best friend. Maybe she isn’t even a friend at all.

Friendships are tricky things. You can be sure everything is fine, and that your friendship is going to last forever. . . and it can just end. No explanation, no anything. And it is not easy. In fact, I think losing a friend is worse than losing a boyfriend, especially when it is a friend you’ve had in your life for a long time.

One of the things that Sarah struggles with in THE UNWRITTEN RULE, beyond her feelings for Ryan, is her friendship with Brianna --- how long they’ve been friends, how she understands Brianna in a way no one else does, and what to do when a crack appears in their friendship, not because of Sarah's feelings for Ryan, but because Sarah begins to wonder if maybe Brianna isn’t her best friend after all.

Having a friendship end is incredibly painful and one of the things I hated when I was younger --- and that I still hate now --- is how people say, “Oh, it’ll be okay. You’ll move on, you’ll be fine.”

It is true that you will eventually move on and that you will be fine. But you will also always carry that lost friendship with you. It may not take up all of your heart like it does at first, but it will take part of it.

And that, I think, is something no one ever talks about and that I wish we could --- and would.

What do you do when someone you are friends with decides your friendship is over? How do you deal with it?

For me, it took tears. . . and time. How about you?

-- Elizabeth Scott