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Summary
Part 2: Chapters 15-19
Chapter 15: LUCY, March 2011
As Lucy prepares for a dinner date with Stephen, Jackie expresses misgivings about him. Although Pippa has told them that Wrigley lied about Stephen sleeping with Nicole, Jackie is still skeptical. Lucy dismisses Jackie, despite also being worried about Diana. After dinner with Stephen, Lucy expects them to go to the DG party, but Stephen wants to go to his room instead. Lucy asks if he wants to avoid Diana seeing them, and Stephen becomes irritated but soothes her. Although Lucy wants to show off their relationship publicly, she agrees to skip the party, and they go to Stephen’s place to sleep together. Afterward, Stephen tells Lucy to go on birth control so that he can climax inside her without a condom. She agrees, inwardly noting that there is no need since she hasn’t had her period in months.
Chapter 16: STEPHEN, May 2011
Diana finds Stephen doing cocaine with his friends at the Hawaiian Luau party. The party was originally hosted by Chops, until the fraternity was shut down by Baird after a student overdosed at one of their parties. Diana and Stephen discuss the fact that the old frat house, Slug, will be available again next year, although Chops is still officially banned. Diana tells Stephen she is ready to get back together and kisses him, asserting herself as his real girlfriend in contrast to Lucy, a fling. Although Stephen has come to the party with Lucy, who is still downstairs, he leaves with Diana, telling her his attachment to Lucy is casual. She calls the Safety Van to drive them across campus. Stephen feels simultaneously relieved and disappointed to have Diana back.
Chapter 17: LUCY, May 2011
At the Hawaiian Luau, Lucy is aware people think she’s too thin and feels conflicting emotions of pride and disgust. Stephen helps her do cocaine in the bathroom and then goes to mingle. Lucy happily anticipates Stephen being near her in Long Island for the month of June, before his Washington, D.C., internship. Lucy notices Diana watching as Stephen goes upstairs and is drunk and high when she realizes she can’t remember the last time she saw him. Lucy’s search for Stephen ends when she sees him kissing Diana. Disoriented by a flashback of CJ with Gabe, Lucy falls down the stairs. Pippa rescues Lucy, and while they wait for the Safety Van, Lucy tells Pippa about seeing Stephen with Diana. Stephen and Diana get into the van seats in front of them. Pippa screams at Stephen, who ignores her, and he and Diana get out at Diana’s dorm.
Chapter 18: STEPHEN, July 2011
After living with his cousin in D.C. for the summer for an internship, Stephen returns to Long Island for his father's birthday party, an event organized by his aunt Amy. Stephen begins drinking when asked to help prepare for his dad’s party. The party guests include middle-aged women whom Amy thinks Stephen’s father may want to date and whom Stephen finds unattractive. Stephen observes his brother Luke and his girlfriend Kathleen, as well as Rod and Vivian, as research for how couples act. Watching them makes Stephen feel uneasy, and soon he has flashbacks of red hair, a girl with a bloodied mouth, and a Cranberries song playing. He is afraid the feeling will last for hours, but watching his father calms him. [120]
Chapter 19: LUCY, July 2011
CJ picks Lucy up at the train station and tries to talk to her about her night in New York City with her high school friends, but Lucy behaves coldly. CJ worries over how much weight Lucy has lost: she is now 110 pounds and wants to lose eight more. Ben makes Lucy’s favorite dinner, soft-shell crabs, but Lucy refuses to eat them, claiming she is now allergic. Georgia's boyfriend, Elliott, is visiting, and the conversation revolves around Lucy's dating life, with CJ remembering Parker and Elliott offering to introduce Lucy to his friends. Lucy is unhappy with the emotional distance between her and her family but can’t face confronting CJ about her affair with Gabe. Later, at the end of the summer, CJ begs Lucy, who is unhappy to now weigh 117, to gain weight when she is back at college.
Analysis
Lucy’s dinner date with Stephen represents her dream of a public relationship with him. While Lucy and Stephen regularly sleep together, their relationship status is unsettled. Stephen knows that Lucy wants him to be her boyfriend, but he’s only interested in sex. Further, his uncertainty about Diana leads him to avoid being with Lucy where Diana might see them. The dinner date offers Lucy a chance to make their connection visible to others, and she relishes the opportunity. When Stephen fiddles with the button of her jeans under the table, she interprets the waitress’s irritation as envy and takes it as confirmation that she and Stephen have an enviable, rare, and valuable sexual chemistry. However, the openness of the evening ends when they leave the restaurant. Lucy wants to attend a party together, but Stephen refuses. When she asks if his motivation is to hide their relationship from Diana, his defensive response is a diversion tactic and a form of emotional manipulation that Stephen employs throughout the relationship.
After Stephen and Lucy have sex in Chapter 15, he tells her to go on birth control. This demand and Lucy’s response represent the theme of control in relationships: Stephen wishes to control Lucy’s body to avoid having to control his own. His desire for her to go on birth control is based on his desire to climax without pulling out first or having to wear a condom, which is a matter of his pleasure, not hers. Stephen’s concern is selfish. He’s not worried about giving his partner a sexually transmitted infection, but rather is protecting his own interests as an unplanned pregnancy would wreak havoc on his career plans. This moment also exemplifies Lucy’s control of her body given her awareness that she is controlling her fertility through her anorexia. It is also a small act of rebellion against Stephen and his control over Lucy.
Ongoing secrecy among the characters is consistent within the novel. As Stephen hides his true intentions and character from others, so, too, does Lucy keep the extent of her eating disorder a secret from him. It is one of the few parts of herself she insulates from Stephen’s influence. The value of secrecy in the case of anorexia is complex, reflecting the ordinary power of keeping things private and also the terms of the societal value of thinness. Lucy envies people like Bree, who she believes to be thin without effort. Thinness achieved through effort is simultaneously a point of pride for Lucy and something to keep secret, so that she can be seen as possessing Bree’s natural ease with her body.
At the Hawaiian Luau, Diana’s confidence is contrasted with Lucy’s insecurity. Stephen is attracted to Diana’s “unmerited confidence,” repeating the description of Stephen from Lucy’s perspective in Chapter 7. In both cases, confidence without a strong basis, such as in Diana’s case, is an aphrodisiac. Both Stephen and Lucy are intoxicated by the power of the confidence itself, a power magnified by the lack of accomplishment to merit the sense of self-assuredness. Here, Stephen is so attracted to Diana that he abandons Lucy completely for months without explanation. Meanwhile, Lucy feels her own confidence vanishing in the face of Diana’s. Lucy is unable to speak when she sees Stephen kiss Diana. Rather than confront him and assert herself at any point, Lucy silently retreats. In the two chapters describing the Hawaiian Luau, there is a striking contrast between Diana’s confidence and Lucy’s sudden lack of ability to fight back.
When Stephen leaves the Hawaiian Luau with Diana, he notices her luster is already waning. The flower in her hair is wilted, and while just moments ago he welcomed the familiarity of her kiss, now her face seems strange to him. Earlier in the party, her red lips made him want to kiss her, but even on his way to her room to have sex, she already appears less attractive. Stephen attributes this change to his having gotten what he wants. For Stephen, having a girlfriend is a mixture of the straightforward physical pleasure of sex and the convenience of having someone who is there to help with his other needs. He does not experience relationships in terms of emotional connections, and he thinks of his girlfriends in terms of their practical value. Stephen explains the disappointment of being with Diana as a natural effect of having gotten what he wants. Stephen is attracted to the pursuit of women, not relationships with them. Diana, like all the women he dates, is less attractive to him once she wants him.
