55 pages • 1 hour read
Jess LoureyUnspeakable Things
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A 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 15-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Cass is excited for the last day of school, as she will ask Gabriel to sign her yearbook. She envisions their potential relationship. Much to her disappointment, Gabriel is not on the morning bus. Wayne, Ricky, and Clam are acting more aggressive than usual. Cass does not see Gabriel before lunch. In the cafeteria, lunch is freely given to avoid waste. Eager to partake in a school meal, Cass throws away her brown bag without opening it. She stacks her tray and takes a seat next to Evie and Frank. Gabriel and Mr. Connelly enter the cafeteria. Cass runs into Wayne, the class clown. Cass reflects on how growing up in a small town means it is very difficult to transition from roles that others expect.
Cass runs through the empty gym, pleased to be there by herself. Mr. Connelly steps out of the shadows, claiming to have been meditating. She asks him to sign her yearbook. She thinks that something feels off, and she remembers the conversation that she overheard in the bathroom. They are both startled by the noise of the locker-room door opening. Gabriel enters the gym with his yearbook for Mr. Connelly to sign. Mr. Connelly says that he will be giving Gabriel discount music lessons during the summer. He asks Cass if she and Gabriel want to sell popcorn together. Cass notes that this is the last time the three of them will be together alive.
Chapter 16 Summary
Cass meets Sephie on the bus and eagerly reads what Gabriel wrote in her yearbook. Sephie failed her chemistry final and must attend summer school. Another bus driver gets on the bus and whispers something in the bus driver’s ear. Gabriel is still not on the bus. Cass tells Sephie about Lynn’s party. Wayne is eavesdropping and makes fun of Cass for being a virgin. She tells him that she heard what happened to Clam, and Wayne immediately shuts down. Wayne says that the attack was Clam’s fault. Cass asks Wayne if he was also attacked, and he leaves.
Cass decides to pick wild strawberries from the ditch near Goblin’s house. Sephie worries that her dad will be mad. The sisters charge toward the strawberries and start shoving them into their mouths. Goblin emerges with a shotgun. The girls sprint home screaming.
Chapter 17 Summary
Cass is worried that she does not hear her dad working. Her mom is working in the yard, and Cass hopes that she is not expected to join. Her dad appears behind them; the sisters are confused because her dad is both sober and happy. Her dad says that the girls can help her mom in the garden or go to town with him. Her mom asks Cass to stay and help her, and Sephie goes to town. Her mom reveals that her dad wants to talk to Sephie about summer school. Her mom tells Cass that Mark Clamchik was taken by a man wearing a mask. Her mom thinks that they are safe because they live in the country, since the Hollow area is on the edge of town. Her mom asks Cass if she enjoyed the frozen Thin Mints that were in her lunch bag. Cass is devastated that she threw them away but pretends that she enjoyed them to make her mom feel better.
Chapter 18 Summary
The family prepares to butcher the chickens. Sephie had clearly been crying after returning from town. Her dad is eager for the violence of butchering day. After the chickens’ heads are cut off, Cass retrieves the bodies. As her dad approaches her, she feels disgusted and afraid. An electrical truck drives past, and her dad tenses. Cass asks him about the attacked boys; he tells her that the boys are lying. She decides to go through his drawers, where she once found pornography, sketches, and a letter from Aunt Jin. Her dad tells Cass that she and Sephie can have the night off since they have to kill more chickens tomorrow. The girls rush to play a game together. Cass tells Sephie that Wayne likes her and that she thinks their parents would be okay with her being a hairstylist. Sephie falls and cuts her knee on bones protruding from the ground, causing her to bleed profusely.
Chapter 19 Summary
Cass thinks her dad killed someone. He rushes to the girls after hearing their screams; he told them that the bones belong to a vulture. The Gomez family needs a babysitter, and her dad sends Cass. Previously, she babysat for the Miller family of four boys. She hopes that the Gomez children will be easier. Mr. Gomez picks her up and compliments her parents’ land. Cass decides that her parents look down on their new neighbors because they are less educated. She is proud of her parents’ educations. Her dad planned to invite the Gomez parents to their next party.
The Gomez house is full of boxes. Mrs. Gomez is very nice. Cass is shocked to see Frank, the new boy from school. Mrs. Gomez clarifies that Mr. Gomez thinks boys should not babysit, which is why Cass was enlisted. Cass leads the kids’ clean-up efforts. Frank tells her that he misses Rochester, but someone was also abducting boys there. Frank tells her that all dirt basements are haunted.
Chapter 20 Summary
Frank and Cass become fast friends. They enjoy watching TV and wrestling. Frank notices that his sisters are asleep and asks Cass if she wants to see something in his parents’ bedroom. They creep in and Frank shows her a round plastic disk of “drugs.” Cass realizes that they are birth-control pills. She teases him and sends him out to check on his sisters. She steals one birth control pill.
Chapter 21 Summary
In a letter to Aunt Jin, Cass thanks her for the Nellie Bly book. She tells her aunt about the abducted boys and her new best friend. She asks Jin to come visit.
Chapter 22 Summary
The family prepares for butchering. Sephie is angry that summer school is starting soon. Cass tells Sephie about her night of babysitting. Sephie wonders if it’s a coincidence that boys were attacked in Rochester before the Gomez family moved to Lilydale. Cass pretends that she has to go to the bathroom so that she can sneak inside while her dad is working outside. She goes through her dad’s drawers and finds nothing new. She recalls Frank saying that all dirt basements are haunted. She is too panicked to enter the basement.
Chapter 23 Summary
Cass asks her mom if she went to school with Sergeant Bauer, Karl the bus driver, Mr. Connelly, or Goblin. Her mom says Goblin was a draft dodger, but Bauer isn’t so bad. Their parents leave to have sex. Cass tells Sephie that she wonders what their parents were like when they were younger. Cass wonders about the timing of her dad’s odd behavior, since his strangeness started around the same time as his meetups with Bauer and the Hollow boys’ attacks.
A box of dresses from Aunt Jin arrives, and the girls are eager to try them on. Cass marvels at Sephie’s beauty. They model the dresses for her dad. The girls try to gauge his mood. He gives Sephie a foot massage. Her dad tells the girls that boys will start dating them and trying to have sex with them. He says that the girls should not have modeled dresses for him if they didn’t want him commenting on their bodies.
Cass and Sephie tag-team their bedtime routines to check for their dad and make sure that he is not hiding in their rooms. Cass checks the headline of his newspaper and sees that another boy was attacked.
Chapter 24 Summary
The article only mentions the boys by age. Cass wants to tell the police that both boys live in the Hollow. She hears her dad clipping his nails and panics. She hides in her closet and writes in her journal, hoping that it will protect her from her dad.
Chapter 25 Summary
her dad makes it to the fourth stair before turning back. Cass is too scared to fall asleep before dawn. The next morning, Cass tells her dad that both boys are from the Hollow. He tells her that the police already know that. She tells him that both boys ride her bus.
Sephie and Cass set up before party guests arrive. Cass is pleased that Sephie has volunteered to bartend. The Frais couple arrives; they have not attended a party in years. Cass wishes that they brought their kids with them. She recalls past parties, which always featured games, marijuana, and lots of alcohol before an orgy. Cass remembers witnessing this when she was nine; she saw her dad have sex with a woman named Kristi. After the parties evolved into orgies, people stopped bringing their kids along. Cass and Sephie enjoy sneaking into the barn to play on the pillows.
her mom is pleased to see the Fraises, whom she did not expect. Mr. Frais notes that the girls are too young to be bartending. Cass tries to warn him that the parties have changed, then tries to soften him up with a drink. He tells her it is too early in the day for him to be drinking.
Cass enters her dad’s studio in search of more lawn chairs. She loves his metal sculptures. Bauer enters the studio and stares at the birthmark around her neck. He tells her to call him Aramis; he does not want anyone at the party to know he is a sergeant. He is wearing a silver chain with dog tags. He tries to physically intimidate her, and she flees.
Chapter 26 Summary
Cass counts the 43 cars in the driveway and dreams about the tables of food. As soon as people finish eating, Kristi takes off all her clothes. The Frais couple quietly leaves. Other women take off the rest of their clothes, then the men. Her mom asks Sephie and Cass to put the food away. Cass is infuriated that an older man was flirting with Sephie.
As Cass cleans up, she is surprised to hear people inside her house. Her dad, Sergeant Bauer, and an unnamed third man are discussing the Hollow boys. Each boy says that the man who attacked them wore a mask. The physical descriptions offered by the boys do not match up. Bauer does not think the boys were actually sexually assaulted. The men discuss Goblin as a suspect. Bauer tells them that Goblin’s stepdad used to rape him. He checked on Goblin and Connelly because he believed them to be the prime suspects. Bauer asks her dad how Cass got her scar. The unnamed man says she is pretty, and her dad asks how much he would pay for her. Cass runs outside to throw up.
Cass looks for Sephie and is worried that she does not know where she is.
Chapter 27 Summary
In a letter to Jin, Cass asks her aunt to visit.
Chapter 28 Summary
The next morning, Cass tiptoes downstairs. She has clothes and Lynn’s present in her backpack. Lynn’s party will start at a roller rink and end with a sleepover. Cass finds her mom in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls for everyone who slept over. Her mom looks very sad. Cass tells her that she could get a divorce. Cass decides to help her mom instead of leaving for Lynn’s party. Her mom offers to drive her.
Chapters 15-28 Analysis
The second section of the novel further explores the themes of Loss of Innocence, Societal Hypocrisy, and The Darkness Lurking Beneath the Surface of Small-Town Life. The loss of innocence of Cass and Sephie is perpetuated by their parents’ insistence that they set up, bartend, and clean up after an orgy. The Fraises’ observations of the impropriety of a child bartending represents an opportunity for Cass’s escape; though she chooses not to ask for help from them, they show her that what she is doing is not okay in the eyes of a responsible adult. This foreshadows Cass eventually finding the confidence to reach out for help, as she will realize that some adults want to help children rather than harm or misuse them. As the Fraises leave, Cass’s awareness of her home as an unhealthy and unacceptable living environment is brought to the forefront, emphasizing the lack of innocence that exists in her world. Though her narration is, at times, unreliable given the merging of her adult self, she knows that her living situation is inappropriate even as a child. However, her dad has forced her into secrecy by threatening to separate Cass from Sephie and their mother if the truth of their home life is ever revealed. This threat creates a tense, dangerous setting of unpredictability.
The narrow-minded attitudes of adults fuel societal hypocrisy and even delusion. Her mom thinks that the children are safe from violence because they live in a more rural area, but the distance between their home and the neighborhood where the boys have been attacked is very small. This sense of confident complacency stands at odds with the constant vigilance that Cass and Sephie must employ to survive in their own home, let alone in the world beyond. Despite the girls’ need to act beyond their years, they are still young and in need of real childhoods. As such, the descriptions of what their parents force them to do are jarring when juxtaposed with descriptions of the sisters bickering over hair, clothes, chores, and boys—decidedly normal preteen conversations. The girls often find comfort in each other, which furthers the difficulty they face in keeping their father’s secret in order to stay together.
Cass’s youth and subsequent naivete is often apparent despite her ability to behave with maturity and intelligence. As she combs through her dad’s drawer and believes that affectionate letters from Aunt Jin reflect a happy family dynamic, the reader quickly understands that Aunt Jin and her dad have a romantic relationship. This creates tension, as Cass’s internal monologue and letters to her aunt reinforce the extent to which Jin presents a source of perceived sanctuary for her. However, this confidence in her aunt will inevitably be reevaluated as the relationship between her dad and Jin comes to light, thus signaling future conflict. Cass also relies heavily on the Nellie Bly book to provide a source of inspiration and stability, but this will quickly lose its positive association for her; soon, the few sources of comfort will be removed, and Cass will be left without tools to cope with her circumstances. The tension steadily climbs as more challenging situations present themselves, culminating with the orgy in this section, as it paints the majority of adults as reckless and uncaring during an emergency situation with regard to the local children’s safety. The author again creates an almost dreamlike setting in which the adults turn a willfully blind eye to the children’s fears while remaining focused on their own pleasures.
Furthering this dreamlike quality to the novel, the boys who were attacked continue to go to school. However, given Bauer’s description of the home lives of many of the Hollow boys, it may be inferred that their parents do not provide adequate resources for them to be home, much like Cass and Sephie. Their experiences are certainly downplayed and treated with little or no alarm, and the boys seem to experience growing aggression following their attacks. Only Cass seems to notice that all the boys who are attacked ride her bus, which implies that they are being targeted based on their areas, and while they might live in the Hollow, anyone on that bus route is in danger.
This section of the text contains several red herrings, including Cass asking her mom how her dad, Bauer, Goblin, and Karl the bus driver acted in high school, but she also considers Mr. Gomez and Mr. Connelly as suspects. As such, a wide net of suspects is cast, and Cass has no way of narrowing down her list with so little information being shared. The bits that she overhears in her father’s conversation seem to suggest that her father, Bauer, and the unnamed man are innocent, as they offer their own guesses. However, these characters could instead be covering their own tracks, so the list of possible suspects seems endless. Further, with such a corrupt group of individuals, pinning down a motive is challenging, as most of the adults operate in inappropriate ways.
While the intended effect may have been to create an unsettling atmosphere of several untrustworthy people, these depictions are often inconsistent, which also raises the issue of unreliable narration, as the lens remains that of a 12-year-old child. The scene between Cass, Mr. Connelly, and Gabriel in the gym is very unsettling, as Mr. Connelly is lurking in the shadows as a red herring, suggesting that he is making unhealthy advances toward Gabriel. Several plotlines are started and then never resolved, becoming successful noise and distraction. The bus driver’s tendency to survey the boys is also pointed out, for example. Cass and Mr. Gomez have awkward interactions, and Frank’s description of the boys being attacked in Rochester also points to Mr. Gomez. In a setting of chaos and debauchery, no motive or suspect can be easily pinned down by a child.
This section of the text also reflects some odd continuity errors that make the text feel disjointed. Cass and Sephie vacillate wildly between careful and careless, deciding to trespass on Goblin’s property after deciding they are terrified of him, infusing the text with a sense of unease, confusion, and persistent danger in almost every corner.
