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Summary
PART 2: Chapters 11-14
Chapter 11: LUCY, August 2017
At Evan’s parents’ house in 2017, the bridesmaids watch Bree try on her wedding dress before the bridal luncheon. At lunch, Lucy, Pippa, and Jackie discuss Bree’s obvious happiness and their own marriage prospects. Noticing that Lucy isn’t eating, Jackie asks if she is okay. Lucy blames her lack of appetite on her anxiety over seeing Stephen, while inwardly reflecting on her envy of Bree. She remembers the night of the Ugly Sweater party, when she told Stephen about the Unforgivable Thing. In the fall of ninth grade, Lucy came home from school unexpectedly early and secretly saw CJ having sex with Gabe, which left her feeling betrayed by both her mother and her crush. At Baird in 2010, Lucy is impressed by Stephen’s empathetic reaction to this story and the close attention he pays her while she tells it. The morning after she sleeps in his bed, they make out and she feels an attraction and arousal she hasn’t felt since Gabe. They have sex for the first time, and she orgasms, which she never did with Parker.
Chapter 12: STEPHEN, December 2010
Diana confronts Stephen about Lucy after Keaton Banks sees them kissing. Diana wants Stephen to stop sleeping with other people before she will agree to formally be his girlfriend again. Torn with indecision, Diana kisses him on her way to leave, and they have sex. Afterward, she is angry again about his infidelities, which leave her unable to trust him, and Stephen has a headache when she leaves. Lucy comes to his room later that night, and they have sex again. Stephen reflects that Lucy will likely want him to be her boyfriend, which will require him to completely break up with Diana. He knows how to use his charm to make women want him, and he finds life more convenient with a girlfriend. He remembers the accident that occurred while he was still with Jenna, his high school girlfriend. He resolves to maintain his sexual relationship with Lucy for as long as possible.
Chapter 13: LUCY, December 2010
The night of the Wild West party, Lucy and Bree try cocaine for the first time at Wrigley’s, where they are preparing for the party by getting drunk and high. Pippa helps them handle the cocaine, and Lucy sits on Stephen’s lap while she snorts it. She likes how the drug sharpens her mind. Stephen compliments her cowgirl outfit, calling her “tiny,” a comment that thrills Lucy, who has lost twelve pounds since the beginning of the semester due to her increasing obsession with heavy exercise and extreme calorie limitation. Lucy finds the feeling of hunger empowering, dismissing the importance of food, since humans can go long periods without any food. She compares her own dieting to Gandhi’s hunger strike, noting that he is, after all, “legendary.”
Chapter 14: STEPHEN, January 2011
Pippa confronts Stephen at the library, accusing him of manipulating Lucy and informing him that Lucy knows he has slept with Nicole Hart. The previous Sunday, Lucy and Stephen wake up together, drink coffee, watch football, and then have sex. After Lucy leaves, Nicole comes to Stephen’s room to pick up cocaine she has left there. They use the coke together, then have sex, just as they had on Friday, unbeknownst to Lucy. Reflecting on his lack of guilt, Stephen remembers accidentally killing his younger cousin Christina’s pet turtle, Marvin, by stepping on it while playing basketball. Although he feels none of the regret his father assumes he will, Stephen apologizes to her because he cannot stand the thought of her hating him. On his way home from the library, Stephen calls Wrigley and demands he tell Pippa that Stephen did not really sleep with Nicole.
Analysis
Throughout the book, Stephen’s eyes repeatedly serve as symbols of Lucy’s magnetic attraction to him and the power he exercises over her. Stephen is described as only ordinarily attractive but having strikingly beautiful green eyes. In Chapter 11, after Lucy makes herself emotionally vulnerable to Stephen by telling him about the Unforgivable Thing, she imagines in his eyes an assurance that he will keep her safe and care for her. When this scene is described from Stephen’s perspective, it is obvious that this impression of Lucy’s is false. Stephen spends the same time thinking about having sex with Lucy, and Lucy mistakenly believes that his attention indicates empathy and emotional closeness. Here, Stephen’s eyes, the windows to his soul, are used to symbolize the counterfeit personality he displays to women. It signifies Stephen’s soullessness in the way he relates to others. Like his charming personality, his eyes give Lucy a false impression of the soul within him and his intentions toward her. This is an example of metonymy, in which a part of the object stands in for the whole. Lucy wrongly believes that Stephen’s beautiful eyes represent his whole character, a misconception that leads her to pursue a relationship with a toxic, apathetic man.
Lucy feels a sense of power and triumph in her weight loss, shown in this section of the book by her joy at Stephen’s description of her as “tiny.” While she begins controlling her eating out of anxiety over the possibility of gaining the “freshman fifteen,” her goal shifts from staying at her current weight to becoming smaller. Lucy’s anorexic mindset is revealed through her sense of victory at the loss of twelve pounds and the sense of satisfaction she finds in falling asleep hungry, an indication that she is treating her body as an enemy to be conquered. In Chapter 13, Lucy compares herself to the hero and freedom fighter Gandhi, seeing no important distinction between Gandhi’s hunger strikes, which he used to gain rights for his people, and her extreme dieting and exercise regimen, which is intended to subdue her own body. In this scene, Lucy experiences Stephen’s comment as praise of the highest value, because at this point in the book, weight loss is her proudest accomplishment.
Stephen describes his compliments to Lucy as an intentional means of building her addiction to him. Thematically, throughout the book, sexual relationships grow increasingly addictive, in the sense that they are all-consuming and often destructive. In Chapter 14, Stephen describes his practice of flattering the women he pursues not to make them feel better but to build a response cycle that connects them to him as they suffer without his compliments. This cycle mirrors the pattern of drug addiction, in the sense that the drug that initially offers pleasure becomes necessary for the addict to avoid pain. Stephen keeps his love interests “hooked” by setting them up to be unhappy without his compliments, thereby becoming both the drug and the dealer. Although Lucy and Diana see his compliments to them as genuine attempts to lift their spirits, Stephen uses flattery only as a tool to control them. Like the actual drugs and alcohol in the book, Stephen’s attention seems to offer a path to pleasure but ultimately builds habits that hurt his girlfriends.
Stephen’s view of sexual morality differs from his girlfriends’, something he strategically avoids letting them know. He feels no guilt for any of his behavior, which is evidenced by his stark assurance of his ongoing sexual infidelity when he explains that monogamy is not natural or desirable. Continuing the theme of addiction in sexual relationships, Stephen describes cheating on his girlfriends in terms of a drug. While Stephen has ample access to satisfying sex with Lucy and with Diana, both of whom he maintains some kind of ongoing relationship with, he craves sex beyond the boundaries of any particular pairing, exemplified in this part of the book by his secret hookups with Nicole. She offers sex with no strings attached, but more importantly, Nicole offers an opportunity to cheat. Cheating itself is what, like a drug, draws Stephen in and “evens him out.”
