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Astrid receives a notice that she is being moved again. She is taken to a beautiful home where Amelia and several girls live. Everyone speaks Spanish, and Astrid is immediately singled out. The girls warn Astrid that the home is not what it seems. The next day, Astrid notices a padlock on the fridge, and over the coming days, she finds that Amelia only feeds the girls dinner. Astrid starves to the point where her period stops. She learns to wait until the other kids at school are done eating lunch and takes their remainders out of the garbage.
One afternoon, Astrid wanders through Hollywood and finds herself in front of her old apartment. She wishes everything was a dream and she was still living a simple life with her mother. Astrid sends a drawing of herself “eating out of the garbage, furtive, with both hands, like a squirrel” (197) to her mother and receives one back from her cellmate, asking for more cheerful notes. Astrid eventually receives a reply from Ingrid, who urges her to call her caseworker and get moved again. When Amelia finds out that Astrid has been calling social services, she becomes enraged, ranting about Astrid’s lack of gratitude, her mother in jail, and her “hideous face” (199). Later, Astrid overhears Amelia bragging about how easy it is to earn money by taking in foster kids. Finally, Astrid is given a new caseworker named Joan, and Astrid reveals that she has been starving and begs for a new placement.
Joan takes Astrid to Ron and Claire Richards’ house in Melrose, who have no children and are hoping to adopt. Astrid meets Claire first, who “reminds [her] of Audrey Hepburn. Dark hair, long neck, wide radiant smile” (206). Claire tells Astrid that Ron is in Canada shooting a film and will not be back until next week.
In the week before Ron’s return, Claire takes Astrid everywhere. When Ron’s arrival approaches, Claire seems to change. She dresses up, cleans the house, and starts feeling anxious. Astrid resents Ron even before meeting him, not liking how he is already throwing off her new routine and life with Claire. Ron strikes Astrid as lackluster and average, and she fails to see why Claire loves him so much. One afternoon, Ron asks Astrid about Claire, and Astrid is certain he is hinting at her mental state; Claire often cries, paces at night, and seems to hate silence. Claire starts stealing items that belong to Ron, putting them in a box and then lying when he asks if she has seen them. Astrid witnesses this but says nothing.
Astrid finishes 10th-grade honors classes with help from Claire. Ron and Claire gift her a gold chain necklace with an amethyst jewel attached. Over the summer, Astrid starts to feel like a family member. One day while Claire and Astrid are out, a homeless man approaches them for money. Astrid watches as Claire does not know how to ignore the man. She hands him money but then agrees to let him smell her hair. Claire looks flustered and perturbed but does nothing about it.
Claire and Astrid spend much of the summer at the art museum, and then Astrid starts 11th grade. Claire also signs Astrid up for art lessons at the museum. Her new art teacher, Ms. Day, teaches the class all the different forms of painting and even how to build a canvas. Ingrid writes to Astrid, telling her she has published some poems. Astrid photocopies the poems and makes them into oil paintings. Claire asks about Ingrid, but Astrid is hesitant to discuss her, wanting to keep Claire separate: “I wanted them to be on different pages, and only I could hold them up to the light together” (235).
When Claire lands a small acting role, she is ecstatic. She practices her lines and movements meticulously. After her first day of shooting, Claire comes home crying and exhausted. Days later, Astrid finds Claire rifling through her personal belongings and letters from Ingrid. Astrid cannot stay mad at Claire, knowing that Claire is the only person who has ever taken a genuine interest in who she is. She sees her mother as psychopathic, showing Claire a list that Ingrid sent her of various ways to kill a person.
Ron comes home from Russia to a fight with Claire; she wants him to find a new job closer to home. Ron blames Claire for being out of work, accusing her of babying Astrid. One day, Astrid finds a letter from Ingrid, but this time it is addressed to Claire. She reads it to find that Claire suggested a visit, and Ingrid obliged. On the way to the prison, Astrid realizes it has been two years since she saw her mother. Ingrid appears brighter and more muscular than ever. She is friendly toward Claire, but Astrid can see through it, noting how her mother is “instinctively [feeling] for the crack in Claire’s personal history, like a rock climber in fog sensing fingerholds in a cliff face” (248). Claire admits that her career is going horribly. She tells Ingrid about Astrid’s schooling and their close relationship, and Ingrid questions Claire about her superstitions and Ron’s work with the paranormal, trying to prove to Astrid that Claire is naïve.
Astrid is asked to leave the table, and she watches as Ingrid whispers something to Claire that drains all the joy from her face. When Claire goes to wait in the car, Astrid demands answers from Ingrid, who says little other than warning her to keep her bags packed. Ingrid would rather Astrid be “in the worst kind of foster hell than with a woman like that” (254). On the drive home, Claire admits that Ingrid confirmed her suspicions that Ron is having an affair. Astrid questions the logic of listening to a woman in prison, but Claire seems unreachable. Days later, a letter comes for Claire from Ingrid; Astrid intercepts it, finding instructions for a love potion for Ron with a list of poisonous ingredients.
By springtime, Claire is losing weight, has stopped gardening or working, and is talking more about death. She and Astrid look through her old jewelry, and Claire puts them on herself as if she is being buried with her possessions. She asks Astrid, “If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?” (261). Astrid does not want to give Claire ideas, thinking of her mother’s intentions to bring Claire toward hopelessness. Astrid compares Claire to a woman lying down to rest in the cold, believing herself to be warm and simply tired, surrendering to death. Claire talks about gassing herself, then kisses Astrid on the mouth. Astrid is confused, but when Claire mentions feeling “unreal” (262), Astrid knows she is lost inside her mind. When Ron hears that Claire is talking about suicide, he asks Astrid if she thinks Claire is serious. Astrid is horrified to think that Claire’s husband is less aware of Claire’s mental state than she is. Ron promises to take everyone camping over the summer, and Astrid feels relieved that Claire will have a reason to stay alive.
Ron keeps his promise and takes Claire and Astrid to Oregon in June. They roast food and fish and sing campfire songs. Claire seems happier and gains weight. One afternoon, Astrid catches a huge fish as Ron coaches her. The accomplishment means a lot to Astrid, as she feels as if she made something from nothing. When everyone has to return to LA, Claire begins to take Prozac and drink. Astrid starts her last year of high school. Claire cheers up for Christmas, but Astrid increasingly resents Ron for his control over Claire’s life and emotions. Claire is drunk most of the time and does nothing but lie on the couch. Ron calls Claire an embarrassment, and she accuses him of cheating. Ron and Claire fight for hours as Claire becomes more and more intoxicated. She slaps Ron, and Ron twists everything, blaming Claire and talking about sending Astrid back. Astrid starts to lose respect for Claire as Ron packs a bag, and she watches Claire beg Ron not to leave. After he is gone, Claire retreats to her room; Astrid knows that Claire is severely ill, stating, “There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a dead spot in the middle. I was supposed to breathe life into that spot, but it hadn’t worked” (283).
Claire overdosed on pills combined with alcohol and died sometime during the night. When Astrid finds her, she shakes her and screams, but Claire does not awake. When Astrid realizes that Claire is dead, she begins to moan and cry, throwing and smashing everything around her. She dresses Claire and “arrange(s) her on the pillow like a princess in a fairy tale, in a glass coffin” (290). She brushes Claire’s hair and wishes Claire had at least said goodbye. Astrid goes through every possibility in her mind, wondering if she could have prevented it or if something she said caused it. She grieves the loss of the only person who ever cared about what she wanted or who she would become. Astrid watches as the rest of the world passes by like another ordinary day, neighbors going about their business and the sun moving across the sky. Astrid finally pages Ron. He comes home and sits on the bed with Astrid and Claire, in tears and distraught. He admits he was not perfect but loved Claire, and Astrid blames him for not loving Claire enough. Although Ron offers for Astrid to stay, she decides to return to the foster system instead.
Astrid feels relieved to be back at the group home, where she is attached to nothing. She is grieving the loss of Claire and cuts her hair to avoid being harassed by the other kids. Astrid feels like she is becoming increasingly like her mother, indifferent and imprisoned, but “even that thought didn’t frighten [her] anymore” (298).
Astrid meets Paul Trout, a fellow artist who seems to have a crush on her. She is intrigued by how he draws and his attention to her, but when Paul approaches Astrid about her current painting, she acts slightly standoffish. Astrid is painting a portrait of Claire as she was when she died and the ambulance arrived. She includes Ron and herself in the painting. Paul starts hinting about a date, but Astrid can only think of how little she wants to do with men after all her experiences over the past few years. She tells Paul she is focused on survival because that is the only thing she has ever had a chance to do. When Paul is placed in a home a few weeks later, Astrid is sad but feels nowhere close to the level of emotion she used to. She also stops writing to Ingrid. When prospective foster parents come to interview the children, Astrid chooses to go with Rena, a woman who seems irritable and imperfect.
When Astrid is taken to Amelia’s house, it appears that she will never get a break from abuse or receive the love and kindness she needs and deserves. Amelia starves and works the girls, using them for the money she gets for being a foster parent. This is confirmed when Astrid overhears her talking to a friend one day, and Amelia tells her friend, “You should take in girls. […] It’s easy money” (200). If Astrid’s experience thus far did not illuminate the flaws in the American foster care system, this admission from Amelia surely does. Like Marvel and Starr, Amelia does not care about the children she cares for; she only wants the money they bring in. As a result, they are severely abused. Astrid ends up starving and searching for food in garbage cans and, at one point, sends a drawing of herself doing so to her mother: “I drew a picture of myself eating out of the garbage, furtive, with both hands, like a squirrel” (197). When Astrid can take no more, she calls social services incessantly until they find her a new placement. Astrid later remarks on how this experience taught her to fight for what she needs from the world. Astrid is then taken to Claire and Ron’s house, and for the first time, it seems like everything is going to work out.
Astrid always has her guard up and worries that her perfect life with Claire could fall apart at any moment. Despite this undercurrent of a crack in the foundation, Astrid starts attending art classes and taking honor classes in school. She develops a sense of hope and pride in herself that she never knew she had and sees the possibility of a normal, successful future opening up for her. These hopes are soon dashed when Astrid discovers that Claire is mentally ill. In particular, Claire is depressed and overly dependent on Ron. She also talks about her own death, at one point placing pearls in her mouth as if she was being buried in a coffin. When Claire’s acting job goes wrong, and she starts corresponding with Ingrid, Astrid knows it is only a matter of time before Claire falls apart. Astrid has come to see her mother as snakelike and sociopathic and knows that Ingrid is jealous of Astrid’s relationship with Claire:
I was a traitor. I had betrayed my master. She knew why I’d kept Claire in the background. Because I loved her, and she loved me. Because I had the family I should have had all this time, the family my mother never thought was important, could never give me 252 (The Delicate Balance of Mother-Daughter Relationships).
Like many before and after her, Claire falls for Ingrid’s manipulation, becoming a fan of her poetry and eating up her words like candy. When they visit Ingrid, Astrid’s suspicions are confirmed as she soon finds out that Ingrid told Claire that Ron was cheating on her (despite not even knowing this for certain). Claire spirals, starting to drink, avoiding work, and doing nothing but waiting for Ron to return from his work trips. Astrid starts to feel disgusted by how pathetic and needy Claire has become—exactly the woman that Ingrid despises (What It Means to Be a Woman). Claire turns out to have a low Capacity for Human Suffering, and after Claire dies, Astrid blames herself. However, she later looks back and realizes that it was Ingrid’s fault for filling Claire’s mind with paranoid lies. Until now, Claire has been the only person to take a genuine interest in Astrid and her future, and Astrid mourns not only Claire but also the loss of this valuable form of support. Unfortunately, since there was such severe contrast between the way Claire was and how she appeared, Astrid comes to view this hope for the future as just another delusion