Leaders of a mercurial clique of girls, Celia and Djuna
reigned mercilessly over their three followers. One after
noon, they decided to walk home along a forbidden road.
Djuna disappeared, and for twenty years Celia blocked out
how it happened.
The lie Celia told to conceal her misdeed became the
accepted truth: everyone assumed Djuna had been abducted,
though neither she nor her abductor was ever found. Celia’s
unconscious avoidance of this has meant that while she and
her longtime boyfriend, Huck, are professionally
successful, they’ve been unable to move forward, their
relationship falling into a rut that threatens to bury them
both.
Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, but her
family and childhood friends don’t believe her. Huck wants
to be supportive, but his love can’t blind him to all that
contradicts Celia’s version of the past.
Celia’s desperate search to understand what happened to
Djuna has powerful consequences. A deeply resonant and
emotionally charged story, The False Friend explores the
adults that children become—leading us to question the
truths that we accept or reject, as well as the lies to
which we succumb.