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Summary
Part One, from “A TIMELINE...” to “...my backpack behind me”
Content Warning: The below contains references to self-harm.
In a short poem, Charlie tells the story of her life. Her father drowns himself, and in her grief, her mother turns violent. She hits Charlie, Charlie eventually hits back, and Charlie’s mother kicks her out. This cycle plays out many times. Charlie takes refuge in drawing and music, but she also cuts herself. Charlie tries staying with Ellis, but the wolf boy leaves drugs at the house and, when Ellis’s parents find out, Ellis blames Charlie. Ellis, brokenhearted and feeling guilty over her betrayal of Charlie, reaches out to her for help, but Charlie ignores her messages, and Ellis cuts herself to the brink of death.
Charlie remains in limbo at the rehab center, waiting to hear what will happen to her and fearing a return to the violence of life on the street. Mikey calls from the parking lot because the center won’t let him in. She runs to the window and sees him standing in the rain, waving an orange traffic cone. She presses her scarred arms to the window as the other girls gather around to gawk. They become agitated, and Vinny calls security, but not before Charlie sees the message that Mikey has written to her on a big piece of paper that he holds up: “Don’t you die.” Blue practically swoons as the security guards wrestle Mikey out of the parking lot and the other girls fall into an agony of tears and nervous tics.
Charlie remembers meeting Mikey in Ellis’ basement, where they hung out, drinking beer and listening to music. She was amazed that they picked her to be their friend. Even though she was jealous of Mikey’s obvious affection for Ellis, she allowed herself to be drawn into their circle. In present day at the center, Charlie is about to be released into her mother’s care. One night, she takes a break from her online classes to message Mikey to ask him to save her. He says he will. Later that night, Blue wakes Charlie up to tell her the story of how she wound up in the rehab center. After running away from home, Blue worked at a grocery store. One day, while she was stocking boxes of cereal, she started to hear laughter. It came from everywhere, even inanimate objects in the store, like the carts and cereal, and she knew that night she would kill herself. She tells Charlie not to let the cereal eat her.
The day arrives when Charlie must leave the center and she sticks her backpack and tender kit into Louisa’s suitcase, while Casper gives her some advice about how to stay well. Downstairs, Charlie sees her mother, Misty, for the first time in a year. Outside, away from the hospital, Misty gives her an envelope with money and her birth certificate, explaining that Charlie won’t be coming home with her. Instead, Mikey, Mikey’s mom, and Misty agreed on a plan to get Charlie away from Minnesota. They buy her a bus ticket to Phoenix, where Mikey lives when he’s not working as a roadie for a band. The money in the envelope is the money that she and Ellis earned doing odd jobs to save for a trip to Europe. Charlie’s mom gives her a fierce, tearful hug and then leaves her to find the bus station and get on with her life. Just as Charlie is wondering what to do next, Vinnie picks her up and takes her to the station, giving her some cash and kind words as he departs.
Analysis
Mikey’s scene in the parking lot outside the rehab center affects Charlie deeply, but perhaps not in the way he intends. Mikey was in love with Ellis, and her near-suicide and resulting vegetative state have frightened and traumatized him. He’s desperate to make sure he doesn’t lose another friend. Unfortunately, he’s oblivious to Charlie’s romantic feelings toward him. He’s also ignorant of the dynamics of a rehab center for psychologically damaged teenage girls, so he doesn’t understand the havoc he’s wreaking in the rec room. Most of the girls, including Charlie, are too young to have had serious boyfriends, and with the problems they’re trying to work through, love might be a very distant star on their horizons. Still, as young women with raw and unpredictable emotions, the spectacle Mikey presents stirs an array of distressing feelings. Vinnie’s reaction to get rid of Mikey and get more help for the girls speaks volumes about his kindness, but the rehab’s rules mean the nurses can’t do much to soothe girls in desperate need of love and the comfort it brings. At the end of the night, only Blue and Charlie seem to get the message: “Don’t you die.”
Charlie’s shift from silent to talkative signals a change in her comfort level at the center. At first, Charlie maintains her silence in the face of taunts from the other girls in rehab because she’s too busy managing her inner turmoil, reminding herself that she is safe from F****** Frank and reassuring herself that her food, bed, and warmth are real. She’s motivated to speak only after she is certain that the people around her are kind and are not harshly judging her. At the same time, this helps her gain confidence to reach out to Mikey, someone beyond the walls of the center. But it is the threat of being discharged that spurs Charlie’s first flood of rapid speech. Fear of the cold world she came from, and memories of its harsh realities, drive her to reveal everything to Casper, but it is too late. Charlie must return to that world because her grandmother no longer has the financial means to pay for her care. This flood of words represents Charlie’s desperation not to return to her mother’s home while waiting for a spot to become available in a halfway house.
In rehab, Charlie has found comfort and friendship with Casper, Blue, and Louisa, who have loved Charlie in their own way and have tried to impart some coping skills. But their love has only reinforced the fact that Charlie’s mother is not the parental figure she should be. In the world outside the center, Charlie’s mother is a brooding, violent figure with the power to put Charlie back out on the streets. Upon seeing her mother, Charlie’s first instinct is to clam up, but the lessons she’s learned have helped her enough that she’s able to square her shoulders, face her mother, and speak. As they walk away from the rehab center, Charlie remembers what she and Casper practiced, and she recites her promise to her mother to follow the rules of the house. But instead of responding as Casper would have expected, based on the role play, Charlie’s mother rejects her and the agreed-upon plan.
Narrator Charlie tries to summarize her life to date in a poem, but despite her age, her life defies easy summary. Charlie is only 17, but she has already lived through many traumatizing experiences. Put together, these experiences create a psychological maelstrom that will take years of recovery. The poem might present events in chronological order, but it lacks dates, reflecting the jumbled tangle of experiences Charlie is still trying to get straight. As part of the attempt, she uses language that’s poetic, but may not reflect reality. For example, she calls herself “Girl” and Ellis “Beautiful Girl.” Eventually Charlie will have to move beyond these simplistic depictions to manage life’s deeper complexities. Similarly, the language she uses is stripped down and raw. This reflects Charlie’s effort to simplify her experiences and manage her reactions, but this paring down also mimics what she has done to her own skin, which raises questions about how helpful this personal mythology really is.
