When her best friend since the third grade starts acting as though Debbie doesn't exist, Debbie finds out the hard way that life can be a lonesome place. But in the end, the heroine of this wryly funny coming-of-age story -- a girl who lives in a house covered with stuff that is supposed to look like bricks but is just a fake brick pattern -- discovers that even the hourly tragedies of elementary school can have silver linings. And a house covered with Insul-Brick can protect a real home.