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Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Part 3, Chapters 32-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3

Part 3, Chapter 32 Summary

Valerie calls her father, and her father is angry when he arrives at the party. Instead of asking her what is wrong, he accuses her of being drunk. Valerie accuses him of not being there for his family. She yells at him, claiming, “Briley’s not your family. I’m your family”(320). He yanks Valerie to her feet and pins her arms to her sides.

On the side of the road, he screams at Valerie: “You either pull your shit together and start acting right or I’ll have your ass out on the street before you can say ‘unappreciative brat,’ do you hear me?” (320). The exchange becomes so heated that a random passerby asks Valerie if she needs help to get away; Valerie wants to say, yes, but says no. She goes back with her father to Briley’s place and explains to Briley what happened. Her father and Briley argue because he doesn’t appreciate Briley’s advice on the matter. Valerie spends the night there, returning home in the morning. Her father extends an invitation to Valerie and Frankie for breakfast. She says she will tell Frankie, but she declines his offer to join them. Valerie’s father says he understands why she won’t have breakfast with him.

Part 3, Chapter 33 Summary

Valerie attends Bea’s art class. Finding herself unable to paint, she pokes vicious holes into the canvas. She does this again and again until she tires.

Part 3, Chapters 32-33 Analysis

After being bullied by Troy and her father, Valerie takes her anger out in art class by stabbing her brush into the canvas; intuitively, Bea understands something is amiss with Valerie, and instantly redirects her anger. When she finally tires, Valerie says, “I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster’s face” (329). Though the result may not be “pretty,” she uses art to help manage her anger over the events of the party and her failed relationship with her father.

Valerie decides she doesn’t belong with Jessica and Meghan. She believes now she imagined her bond with Nick, too: “I never really belonged with Nick. Because I totally betrayed him, made him think I believed what he believed, made him think I would be on his side no matter what, even if he killed people” (329). As she regards the destroyed canvas, shaking with inner turmoil and loneliness, Valerie sees firsthand how internal pain can be externalized, in the jagged, uneven holes in the canvas. She makes a mental note: “Bea was wrong. I was both the monster and the sad girl. I couldn’t separate the two” (330). Valerie comes to understand she cannot pick apart the pieces of her personality: she must grow to accept herself as a whole, the good and the bad together. This means coming to terms with her role in the shooting and her family’s turmoil.