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Summary
Part Two, from “The rush of breakfast...” to “...of Mikey’s face”
Content Warning: The below contains references to self-harm and addiction.
The next day at True Grit, Julie interviews Charlie about the dishwasher job. When Julie orders Riley to get her a coffee, he asks Charlie if she’d like some, which Julie finds strange. Normally, Riley treats girls with exaggerated affection without asking what they’d like, making them frothy concoctions topped with whipped cream and sprinkles. Charlie is honest with Julie about how she got to Tucson and explains that she tried to kill herself and needs a job. Julie gives her a lapis lazuli stone to help her heal, and hands her employee paperwork to hire her as a permanent dishwasher. Back at work in the kitchen, Riley half-apologizes to Charlie for grabbing her, and she feels herself falling for him. At the library, Charlie emails Casper and reads an email from Blue. Before looking for her own apartment, she scavenges soap, toilet paper, and a blanket from the food bank, which also yields household goods and period products, but cannot offer her food. Instead, she investigates the dumpster behind the grocery store, where she finds a drunken Riley looming. He tells her she can ask him for food if she needs it and doesn’t need to go scrounging for it.
First month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit, and utilities prove too much for Charlie’s budget, but she finds an ad posted on a fence for a place that looks cheap. The man in the apartment building’s office, Leonard, shows her a run-down two-room apartment, with a toilet and shower in the kitchen. She doesn’t really know how to judge the place, but Leonard seems kind, so she takes it. She packs her stuff at Mikey’s and bikes it all over to her new place, where she finds a blown-out light bulb. She buys a bulb off Leonard for a quarter, hangs Ariel’s cross on the wall, and feels a little at home. The next day, she hears a rapping on her door, and opens it to find Mikey back from tour. The two cry and hug, remembering Ellis and confessing their feelings of guilt.
Over a burger and fries, Charlie tries to tell Mikey why she hurt herself, but it’s hard because he doesn’t know about her cutting behavior, her father’s suicide, or Ellis’s secret problems. He asks to see Charlie’s scars, and she shows him, but she still can’t tell him everything that happened to her. Mikey tells her he is sober and that DannyBoy also got clean, giving Charlie the hope that she might be able to stay clean as well. They borrow a friend’s pickup truck and troll the town for furniture left behind by departing college kids. They run into Riley, and Mikey is surprised to realize he knows him. Mikey explains that Riley was in a band and that one of his songs had been pretty popular for a while. Charlie remembers the music video that she and Ellis had watched, and she remembers thinking Riley was attractive. Now, Riley is drunk, a little high, and appears worn down. Back at the apartment, Charlie tries to make a move on Mikey, but he politely rejects her and leaves, reassuring her that he’ll help her. Alone, Charlie sketches Riley and feels the same electric shock she gets when she’s with him. But then she thinks of Mikey again, and begins to sketch him instead.
Analysis
Charlie is used to living on scraps, and she continues this pattern in her relationships. Despite having loved Mikey for years, she knows that she could only ever be his second choice, since he was in love with Ellis. Riley doles out small kindnesses that Charlie senses might hide something rotten, but she is so lonely and desperate to be loved that she leaves the door open to Riley’s advances. Charlie is aware of repeating damaging patterns from her relationship with her father, who clung to her when he was experiencing a certain degree of sadness and shut her out when he reached another level, but this familiar cycle offers her comfort rather than a warning. Charlie’s mother, father, Riley, and Mikey all set the terms of their relationship with her, ignoring her craving for deeper connections. Even her treasured friendship with Ellis had not been equal, as Ellis confided in Charlie when she needed a friend yet quickly blamed her for the drugs to save her relationship with the wolf boy.
Julie, like many of Tucson’s residents, has a different perspective on life and trauma from which Charlie might be able to benefit. Her brother Riley is an alcoholic and drug addict who sucks the air out of the room with his need to be adored. Nevertheless, Julie loves him and does her best to protect him from himself, and to rescue him when she cannot. Although she is gruff with him and her employees, she embodies the kind of unconditional love Charlie needs and has never experienced. Julie immediately realizes two things about Charlie. First, Riley treats her with something like respect, and second, it’s clear that Charlie has been deeply traumatized. Julie’s gift of the lapis lazuli is the novel’s first spiritual gesture, and it points to the idea of a higher power. All the coping strategies Charlie has been taught to this point had involved physical and mental exercises like breathing, focusing on the present, or reframing memories and experiences. A spiritual solution is new to her, but it is also comforting, as is Julie in a strange kind of way.
Since leaving rehab, Charlie has been able to fulfill her basic survival needs, which paves the way for her to recover and develop in deeper ways. Part of this is driven by her devotion to Ellis, with whom she once shared big dreams. Charlie’s desire to honor those now-unlikely dreams helps her overcome her reluctance to speak so she can get a job, which will help her preserve her and Ellis’s savings. Setting and achieving small goals, like finding a job, apartment, and food do more for Charlie than meet her basic needs: they enable her to envision and create a fuller life than she had when she lived at Seed House. Charlie’s ability to learn from her homelessness has given her the knowledge and resilience to do better this time around. She relies on her resourcefulness and street smarts to help her stretch her budget, using what she has learned from her brutal past to set course for a brighter future.
