Plot
Vanessa Snyder (Alexa Vega) is an admired eighth grader in her school. She has a loving single mother, Barbara (Lisa Vidal), who is proud of her well-placed daughter. Vanessa is also "in" with the popular clique, led by her best friend Stacy Larson (Leah Pipes), the queen bee, and Nikki Rodriguez (Elizabeth Rice), who is secretly jealous of Stacy and Vanessa's closeness. On the exterior of the circle is the outsider, Emily (Shari Dyon Perry), and the wannabe, Tiffany (Alicia Morton), who is dying to make it into the crowd.
One day, Nikki tricks Vanessa into getting close to Tony (Chad Biagini), a boy whom Stacy (and somewhat Vanessa) has a crush on. A web of lies, nasty rumors, and manipulation ensues, and Vanessa is ostracized by the clique for "backstabbing" Stacy. Nikki gets Tiffany accepted into the clique, and Tiffany becomes Nikki's sidekick at poisoning others against Vanessa. Although Nikki is the main bully, Stacy plays her part by pretending she's still Vanessa's friend and not stopping the attacks. The girls spread stories about a summer fling, shoplifting and stuffing her bra, among others. Vanessa also plays soccer but runs away from it when she is called a whore by other girls. Vanessa is slowly pushed out of class activities, called names, socially isolated and the worst, her tormentors create a webpage that bashes her.
Emily tries to convince Vanessa not to go running back to the clique, but Vanessa keeps attempting to seek reconciliation with Stacy, to disastrous results. One night, Vanessa has a nervous breakdown and chops most of her hair off. Then she starts skipping school, fearing the agony in the hallways. Stacy offers a fake truce to Vanessa, making it look like Vanessa copied one of Stacy's assignments when it was in fact vice versa.
Once Barbara sees printed-out comments on Vanessa's hair, she tries to help by informing the school about the bullying, to no avail as they're unable to take disciplinary action against non-physical bullying. Barbara even tries to talk to Stacy's mother, Denise (Rhoda Griffis) but only ends up straining their friendship.
Vanessa's spirits are suddenly lifted when Stacy invites her to her birthday party. After preparing, she arrives at a club, which is not the site of the party--it turns out there was no party at all. When discovering this, Vanessa goes ballistic and takes an overdose of her mother's sleeping pills, but survives and only passes out.
In the hospital, Barbara reveals to her daughter that she was also emotionally bullied when she was a teenager, which caused her to encourage Vanessa to stay friends with Stacy. She says that she never dealt with it herself and wished Vanessa would learn self-defense. During a class session, Emily accuses Stacy of nearly killing Vanessa by her actions. She is also the only one of Vanessa's classmates to visit her in the hospital and befriend her. Back home, Barbara spots malicious instant messages popping up on Vanessa's computer and sends them to the principal. The culprits, Nikki, Tiffany, and a boy named Ezra (Joey Nappo) would be expelled and not graduate if they deny that they cyber-bullied Vanessa.
When Vanessa returns to school, Stacy convinces her that she's sorry about the bullying, reuniting them both. They IM each other about how great it is to be best friends again. Then graduation day comes and the final conflict happens when after the ceremony, Nikki and Tiffany read aloud the chat between Vanessa and Stacy, which Stacy had sent to Nikki, and which Nikki had printed out. Vanessa confronts Stacy in front of the whole class, bringing everything down on her and sees right through her offer of false friendship. Humiliated, Stacy flees the school in tears and her two "henchwomen", Nikki and Tiffany, are left powerless without a leader. The class applauds Vanessa as she hugs Emily, the only true friend she's ever had. Barbara, who has witnessed the whole exchange, watches with pride as they both leave for an after-party, permanently disbanding the bullying clique.
Read more about this topic: Odd Girl Out
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