SLUMMING

High school seniors Nikki, Alicia and Sam (two girls and a guy) embark on a Pygmalion-like plan. They will each choose a person (who is "obviously untapped, and we will try to open him up, set him free, give him life"), take the chosen three to the prom and, afterward, decide which has wrought the biggest change. Predictably, after picking, respectively, a nerd, a rebel and a misfit, each of the friends, all Mormons, learns that the "untapped" person isn't what they imagined—and that they need to face their own problems. Randle (The Only Alien on the Planet) rotates through the three narrators' perspectives with mixed success; while dreamy Alicia's belief that the school bad boy is simply misunderstood seems realistic, the intense family problems that Sam unearths from black-lipstick-wearing Tia read as extreme (her stepfather threatens to stop paying for her retarded brother's care unless "his other needs were looked after"). Readers may be disappointed that the premise all but disappears after the set-up, and the book's point, that "there are lots of wonderful normals out there," seems obvious. While there are some tender moments, especially when the narrators deal with their own families (Alicia buys her sister new Sunday shoes after their mother leaves them; loudmouth Nikki breaks down when she overhears her parents fighting), the novel frequently feels formulaic. Ages 12-up. (July)