Teenagers Seth and Kendra are dropped off by traveling parents at their grandfather’s isolated Connecticut estate, and soon discover why he’s so reluctant to have them-the place is a secret haven for magical creatures, both benign and decidedly otherwise. Witty repartee between the central characters, as well as the occasional well-done set piece, isn’t enough to hold this hefty debut together. One classmate is made a scapegoat and literally marked by a mob of girls wielding felt-tip pens Penelope suspects that her mother’s new “friendship” is really an affair she realizes that deciding to part from the dictating mob will be painful.

Pollet’s light-hearted rendering of surface concerns (is it okay to buy earrings that match the alpha girl’s?) gives way to deeper currents in which Penelope finds herself trying to stay afloat. She develops a tenuous friendship outside of school with a somewhat eccentric, individualistic classmate. One bullying girl dictates to the rest that kids new to Elston be spurned, and Penelope is startled to discover that her feelings oppose this, and that she’s ambivalent about her long-time “best” friendship. As her elementary-school classmates from Elston rush ahead into seventh grade, Penelope finds herself trailing the pack. She’s arrived in the memorable territory of cliques, mean girls, and growing up, when simple friendships can be transformed by some girls into weapons-or liabilities. In an Upper East Side private school, a status-conscious, label-conscious, preppy 1981, Penelope Rosenberg is confronting the ambiguities of 12 going on 13.

Nobody was here by alison pollet