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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Content Warning: The below contains references to self-harm.
The Lapis Lazuli Stone
When Julie gives Charlie the lapis lazuli stone, it symbolizes hope for Charlie’s future, a dramatic reversal from the negative connotations that stones and rocks once carried for Charlie. Charlie remembers that she felt as though her throat and mouth were filled with rocks both at Seed House and when she was dumped at the hospital. This sensation, which was linked to the physical experience of pneumonia, was a precursor to Charlie’s refusal to speak. Her trauma at Seed House and the underpass, and her inability to process this trauma, had a physical effect on her body. When Julie learns about Charlie’s past, she gives her a healing lapis lazuli stone, which Julie believes can help process emotional trauma and encourage healing. Unlike Casper’s more practical advice, the lapis lazuli stone offers a spiritual path to healing. Regardless of its actual physical healing properties, Charlie finds comfort in touching and holding it. She feels the same heat radiating from it that she feels when she pinches her own thighs or contemplates self-harm, so in this sense, its power is very real.
The Red Cross
Charlie’s tender kit has a faded red cross on the outside, a symbol of its military use as a medical care kit. Charlie fills the kit with gauze, ointments, disinfectants, and bandages, which have medical uses, but she also includes shards of broken glass, tools of self-harm that subvert the kit’s original intention. Charlie steals a red cross from Ariel’s home in an act of petty vengeance after Ariel encourages her to share something significant about herself. Charlie feels violated, as though telling Ariel her story has forced her to give up a piece of herself, so she feels that she is justified in taking something from Ariel. Ariel’s red cross is ornate and decorated with the kinds of skulls used in Diá de los Muertos celebrations to remember the dead. To Charlie it looks like something Ellis would have picked out for decoration, so it is a way to keep her past friendship with Ellis alive in her new city. When Mikey shares Ariel’s story with Charlie, she returns the cross with an apology, a sign that she is developing empathy and can understand people on a deeper level.
The Stars
Lying swaddled and bloody on the hospital lawn, Charlie gazes at the stars, seeing them both as glittering gems and as flecks of salt on a black piece of fabric. These stars become a recurring image for Charlie, revealing truths about the universe and representing the distant possibility of beauty. Louisa shuts out the starlight every night, signaling a secret inner darkness despite her outward joy and beauty. When Charlie peeks through the curtains to look at the stars, she feels comfort in being connected to the vast world beyond the rehab center. The night Evan and Dump shatter a bottle on the head of Charlie’s attacker is a turning point, emphasized by the crystalline shards of glass that glitter against the night sky and Dump’s black boots. In Santa Fe, the same stars that Charlie had beheld from the hospital in Minnesota shine down on her, giving her hope that something beautiful might yet be made of her life.
