60 pages • 2 hours read
Louis SacharSmall Steps
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
On their evening walk, Armpit tells Ginny that Coo didn’t win. Ginny is sad but holds back her tears. When they talk about school, Armpit notices that Ginny’s stutter gets worse, so he changes the subject and tells Ginny about Tatiana. Ginny cheers up and teases Armpit about “Tati-ahna,” telling him that she had smelled Tatiana’s perfume on Coo. When Armpit admits that he doesn’t know whether Tatiana likes him or just wants to go to the concert, Ginny reassures him that Tatiana must like him because he is a “v-very thoughtful and caring p-person” (88).
When Tatiana tells her friends that she is going to the concert with Armpit, they ask whether she is scared. Tatiana replies that she thinks he’s sweet, to which they respond, “Sweet? He almost killed two people, girl!” (89). Then her friends start talking about how smelly he must be to have the nickname “Armpit.” Tatiana doesn’t disagree with them but says it will be “cool” to see Kaira DeLeon.
On Saturday, the day of the concert, Armpit works his landscaping job then visits Ginny before getting ready to pick up Tatiana. He finds Ginny crying because her father, who left when she was a baby, had called. Ginny’s mother explains (again) that her father didn’t leave because of Ginny’s disability, but Ginny is still upset. Armpit manages to comfort Ginny, saying, “He’s a lot worse off than you. You just had a little bleeding in your brain. He’s got something wrong with his soul […] You at least can go to physical therapy. I don’t know what they can do for someone with no heart and soul” (91).
Armpit’s mother enters the room with the phone, excitedly gesturing that it is Tatiana on the line for Armpit. Tatiana tells Armpit that she’s sorry, but she can’t go to the concert because a “family thing” (92) has come up. Armpit hangs up and calls X-Ray, hoping he can still sell the tickets but then changes his mind again. Armpit turns to Ginny and asks, “So Ginny […] You want to go to the concert with me?” (93).
Chapter 14 Summary
Armpit calls X-Ray and tells him not to sell the tickets because he’s taking Ginny. X-Ray calls him crazy and tells Armpit that he has a buyer willing to pay $200 a ticket, but Armpit does not budge. Ginny’s mother tells Ginny to do everything Armpit says. Armpit’s parents are more worried than Ginny’s mother and look surprised when she says “You must be very proud of Theodore” (96). X-Ray arrives late to drop the tickets off and doesn’t answer Armpit when he asks why. Instead, he jokes around and says “Just remember […] Be flexible” before Armpit and Ginny drive off in Ginny’s mother’s car. On the way to the concert Armpit and Ginny sing Kaira DeLeon songs, “I’m gonna take you someplace you never been before […] And you’ll never be the same again” (97).
Chapter 15 Summary
At the concert venue, Ginny is so excited she can barely walk and holds tight onto Armpit. After getting drinks and popcorn, Armpit and Ginny go to their seats—and they are great seats.
Backstage Kaira is getting ready, surrounded by people she barely knows. She sees her mother drinking a cocktail from a plastic cup and wonders whether she suspects the affair between Jerome and Aileen.
A DJ goes onstage to fire up the crowd. Ginny is so excited that she accidentally digs her fingernails into Armpit’s arm. Armpit feels a tap on his shoulder and turns to find a security guard standing with a couple claiming to have tickets for Armpit and Ginny’s seats. The guard asks to see Armpit’s tickets. As Armpit is searching through his pockets the guard calls the police for backup. Relieved, Armpit finds the ticket stubs and hands them over. The security guard says the tickets are counterfeit. Confused, Armpit reaches over to see the tickets at which point an officer grabs him and, together with another officer, twists Armpit’s arms behind his back, handcuff him and pins him face down on the ground. An officer digs his knee into Armpit’s back. One officer yells into Armpit’s face, “What’s she on?” (104). As the officers twist Armpit’s head, he hears them asking what drugs he gave Ginny and calling for a doctor to pump her stomach. Armpit catches a glimpse of Ginny and sees her having a seizure—the sight of which makes him jolt up. The officers respond by beating Armpit and pushing him back down. Armpit tries to tell them Ginny is having a seizure, but they don’t let him talk. Suddenly the mayor, Cherry Lane, is standing by Armpit, asking what is going on. She listens to Armpit and argues with the security guards to let him go, pointing out that no one would knowingly sit in seats with counterfeit tickets. The police refuse to let him go until the mayor threatens, “You let him go right now, unless you want to spend the next ten years walking up and down Lamar Boulevard” (106). Armpit rushes to Ginny and cradles her, gently telling her “I’m here now. […] It’s okay now” (106).
Backstage, Kaira tries to find out what is holding up the concert. Laughing, Jerome tells her that he saw a “big black dude” (107) and the “cops beating the crap out of him while the little white girl was having a spaz attack, because they thought he gave her drugs!” (107). Not seeing the humor in the situation, Kaira goes to the security area where Armpit is holding a crying Ginny. Cherry Lane stays with Armpit and defends him against the repeated accusations by the officers about making threatening movements and resisting arrest: “I’m not going to let you justify your actions by blaming the victim […] Would the gestures have been so threatening if he was white?” (109). As soon as Kaira enters the room, Ginny stops sobbing. Kaira asks Ginny how she is doing, and Ginny makes her smile by saying, “My body w-went to red alert” (110), a reference to one of Kaira’s song titles. Kaira then asks Ginny if she would like to watch the concert from backstage.
Chapter 16 Summary
On their way backstage, Kaira asks Armpit if he is Ginny’s nurse. He replies that they are friends. “He’s my best friend” adds Ginny (111), making Kaira cringe at her own inaccurate assumptions. David, a stagehand, gets Ginny and Armpit new T-shirts and seats them behind some electronic equipment so they have a perfect view of the stage. When the concert starts, Armpit cannot believe the “dazzlingly beautiful” girl singing powerfully on stage is the same “gum-chewing” girl he had met in the security area. Armpit worries that the music is too loud for Ginny, but she is blissfully mesmerized by Kaira DeLeon. The audience is entranced by Kaira’s singing, and she feeds off their energy, feeling more connected to them than usual. Kaira’s song “Angry Young Man” (116) nearly makes Armpit cry, thinking it could have been about him before Camp Green Lake. He knows that “it was coming home and meeting Ginny” that saved him, not the camp.
When Kaira sings her song “Damsel in Distress,” Armpit hears his name again: “Save me, Armpit. A damsel in distress” (118). Kaira and the band have a script that that they follow, but tonight Kaira speaks to the audience off script. After a raunchy “Frying Pan” song Kaira says, “So many of these songs seem to be about sex! […] You’d never guess I’m a virgin” (119). Ginny and Armpit go wild as Kaira launches into their favorite song “I’m Gonna Take You for a Ride” (120). Kaira turns to Ginny and Armpit, inviting them onstage for a thumping rendition of her hit song “Red Alert.” The band, thrilled with the way the concert is going, decide to do a second encore. They freestyle “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin. They mess up the lyrics but have “pure fun” along with the audience, “the way rock ’n’ roll was meant to be” (124).
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
During their conversation about school, Armpit agrees with Ginny that her teacher might be nervous about Ginny’s seizures, but he points out that that her teacher likely appreciates that Ginny is a “thoughtful and caring person” (87). This is the same reasoning that Ginny puts to Armpit later in the conversation, about why Tatiana must like him (“You’re a v-very thoughtful and caring p-person” [88]). Ginny sees Armpit for who he is. Her opinion of him is based on her experience, not other people’s chatter. In contrast, Tatiana likes Armpit but is easily swayed by her friends’ negative opinions of him, which are based on misinformation and gossip. They know Armpit’s nickname and assume that he got the name at Camp Green Lake because “[o]ut of all those nasty, sweaty guys, he smelled the worst” (89). Tatiana is not a bad person, but she is indicative of the uphill battle Armpit faces while trying to make friends and fit in at school. Initially Ginny’s mother had doubts about Armpit, too, almost moving out when she heard “a violent criminal” (21) was coming home. But once she meets him and sees his empathy and intuition toward Ginny (shown after the call from Ginny’s father), she never doubts his genuinely good character again. Therefore, Ginny’s mother doesn’t hesitate to approve when Armpit asks to take Ginny to the concert. She trusts Armpit more than Armpit’s own parents, who are still expecting him to fail. Armpit’s mother is “caught off guard” (96) when Ginny’s mother tells her, “You must be very proud of Theodore” (96). Ginny and her mother are the first people to provide Armpit with affirmation of his self-worth, followed by the mayor and his boss—both of whom also see past his history and intimidating appearance.
Armpit experiences unconscious bias again when the security guard at the concert asks to see his tickets. When Armpit reaches into his pockets, the guard “instinctively stepped back from him” (102). The cascade of racially charged “misunderstandings” that happen once the tickets are found to be counterfeit shows the speed at which a situation can spiral dangerously out of control when one side refuses to listen to the other. The layers of incorrect assumptions made by the security and police (the most damaging being that Armpit had given Ginny drugs on which she was overdosing) could have been avoided entirely if Armpit had been treated with respect and allowed to talk. Cherry Lane, unafraid to step into a volatile situation, says, “You don’t hit somebody who’s already on the ground, in handcuffs” (105), a statement that reiterates her inherent sense of justice and fairness.
Ginny’s seizure could understandably be mistaken for a drug overdose, and, had Armpit been white, the police likely would have asked questions and listened before using physical force to subdue him. Instead, they beat and choke him as they shout questions at him without waiting for a reply. After the police realize their mistake, instead of apologizing, they repeatedly ask Cherry Lane to leave so they can charge Armpit for “resisting arrest” (108). Cherry’s persistence and forthrightness is shown by her comments to the officers: “I’m not going to let you justify your actions by blaming the victim […] Would the gesture have been so threatening if he was white?” (109). Her comments underscore the dangerous reality of the Discrimination and Inaccurate Assumptions that Armpit routinely faces. The fact that unconscious bias happens in all racial groups is shown when Kaira asks Armpit, as she takes him and Ginny backstage, “So are you like her nurse or something?” (111). Unlike the police, Kaira recognizes her mistake—assuming that because Ginny is white and Armpit is an older Black teenager he must work for her family—and she apologizes. Interestingly, Armpit is so close to Ginny that he does not know why Kaira is apologizing.
The story arc swings abruptly from Armpit’s brutal beating and Ginny’s seizure to the pure joy and excitement they experience as they watch the concert. Largely because of their friendship and care for one another, they are strong and resilient enough to appreciate Kaira’s gesture of the backstage seats and to immerse themselves in the experience.
Kaira’s loneliness and unhappiness are also highlighted in this section. Before her show, Kaira must wait in a skimpy outfit with people she doesn’t know, listening to Jerome’s bigoted comments about her fans. She is always surrounded by older, controlling people, so Kaira instantly sees Ginny and Armpit as “friends,” even though they have just met. Armpit gets a glimpse of the real Kaira when he sees her transform on stage into a “dazzlingly beautiful” (114), powerful, and confident young woman whose lyrics seem directed to him. When Armpit hears the song “Angry Young Man,” he thinks about how much he has changed since Camp Green Lake. He knows that it “wasn’t really Camp Green Lake that released him from his anger. It was coming home and meeting Ginny” (117). He has matured since coming home and can identify his gratitude and love for Ginny.
Meeting Armpit and Ginny before the show flips a switch in Kaira. For the first time, she enjoys performing and connecting with the audience rather than disappearing “into the music” (100). When Kaira goes “off script” by performing a Janis Joplin cover, she starts to take back control, giving her audience and band members a glimpse of her authentic self. Her band reacts positively to the “real” Kaira they see on stage and enjoy playing with her rather than routinely performing their job.
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