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Friday, September 8–Friday, September 15

Summary: Friday, September 8

Paul goes to soccer practice. The kids start calling him “Mars” because of his prescription goggles. Paul accepts this, realizing he can’t do much about it. As long as he’s on the team, he’s willing to take the abuse. Gino, one of Paul’s teammates, calls him over. He says Coach Walski needs to speak to him. Coach Walski tells Paul he can’t play on the team anymore because Paul is in an IEP, a specialized program he’s in at school because of his eyesight. Since he’s in the program, Paul poses an insurance risk to the team. Paul feels devastated. Back in the car with his mother, he’s furious with her for signing him up for the IEP program. Mrs. Fisher feels horrible and guilty.

Summary: Friday, September 8, later

Paul and his parents are on their way to Mike Costello’s wake. Paul is nervous to go, having never seen a dead body before. On the way, his father points out a series of osprey nests on the power lines. Mr. Fisher says the nests should be removed “before they cause problems” for the neighborhood by causing power outages. Paul silently reflects on how the ospreys building their nests isn’t that much different than people building homes in precarious areas. He wonders how many times the ospreys get hit by lightning.

At the wake, Paul sees Joey. Joey seems to be in good spirits. They chat about how Paul got kicked off the soccer team. Joey, whose father is a lawyer, says Paul should get his dad to sue. A girl next to Joey has her arm around him and consoles him. Another girl, Kerri, is with Joey as well. Kerri tells Paul she hears he’s a good soccer player. Paul gets choked up, not knowing what to say back. Joey asks Paul to come with him to the carnival. Joey’s father wants them to go to keep Joey’s spirits up. “Life must go on,” his father says.

Summary: Saturday, September 9

Mrs. Fisher drives Paul and Joey to the carnival. The carnival is in Tangerine County. Paul thinks about how they’ve been all around the Lake Windsor district, but not in this part of the county. They notice a smell in the air as they’re driving, a faint scent of citrus. Paul likes the scent, but Joey doesn’t. Paul’s mother explains that there used to be a major tangerine plantation here. Some of the houses they see are an ugly lime green color and built with cement blocks. Mrs. Fisher says they were likely built for permanent workers at the citrus packing plant.

Paul and Joey pass by some rough-looking characters on their way into the carnival. Joey warns that they might be gang members. Inside, they head to a freak show exhibit called “The Wonders of the World.” Paul wanders off, staring at a photo of the Boy Who Never Grew, an eighty-nine-year-old-man who stayed trapped in the body of a five-year-old. Paul reflects on how his own picture should be on the wall for being a blind “freak” himself. Kerri is at the carnival too, but she doesn’t notice Paul. Paul’s mother picks them up later, and they see a bunch of boys hanging off the back of a truck. Paul’s mother looks at them dismissively, saying they’re acting dangerously.

Summary: Monday, September 11

Back at school, Paul and Joey, along with other soccer players, get called into Principal Gates’s office. Coach Walski is there, as is Mr. Murrow, the guidance counselor. They all appear angry. They claim that a group of soccer players trashed The Wonders of the World exhibit at the carnival. Paul realizes who the culprits are, a group of soccer players from Tangerine County, not Lake Windsor. Principal Gates feels relieved when Paul tells on them and says she “knew” it couldn’t be kids from Lake Windsor. Joey goes along with Paul, but Paul is still nervous the boys will find out who ratted on them. Paul asks Joey about Kerri, who was with another boy at the carnival. Joey says he doesn’t think she is “with” the boy because he’s a geek. 

It’s been raining hard all day. As the boys walk back to class, they hear a huge whooshing sound and see the ground opening up. A huge sinkhole is forming, and several portables are getting swallowed up by the mud. Paul and Joey make a heroic dash to pull kids from the sinking holes. All the students are safe, and tragedy is averted.

Summary: Monday, September 11, later

The sinkhole catastrophe makes national news. Paul’s grandparents call from Ohio saying they saw footage of the sinkhole on CNN. A local geologist explains to reporters that the above-normal storm runoff had caused an underground cavern to form and collapse. Mr. Fisher now has a public relations nightmare on his hands because his boss is away and he’ll have to step in to answer questions as a representative of the city’s Department of Civil Engineering. Mr. Fisher will have to answer why the school was built on unsafe ground. Paul goes to bed feeling good about his bravery and thinking about how he’s still scared of Erik, but it feels different now.

Summary: Tuesday, September 12

The Tangerine Times runs a special section on the disaster. Paul is impressed with the photos. He thinks it looks like Godzilla walked through the school grounds. A special disaster meeting is called by Principal Gates for Friday night. For now, the school is condemned. Paul is shocked to learn that the sixth graders will return to school on Thursday, two days later. Charles Burns, Mr. Fisher’s boss, is now back in the office from Daytona and is taking “special charge” of the case. He has hastily deemed the main building of the middle school and all buildings of the high school “safe.” Paul, surveying the damage, thinks about how half of the football stadium seating has been destroyed and how Erik has lost half his audience.

Summary: Thursday, September 14

Mr. Fisher is made the new director of Civil Engineering for Tangerine County. It turns out Charles Burns had been paid off by developers for years in exchange for letting them do their own inspections and building permits across the county. Lake Windsor Downs was one of the developments that never had a proper inspection. Paul reflects on how now it is the “Dad” era, just like it has been the “Erik Fisher Football Dream” era.

Summary: Friday, September 15

Paul expects to be out of school for at least a few months. His mother starts calling around for schools for him to attend. She suggests a Catholic school, but Paul protests. The family goes to the emergency meeting later that evening. Principal Gates announces the relocation plan the school has come up with. The seventh graders have an option to go to Tangerine Middle School. Paul realizes this is his lucky break: If he transfers schools, he’ll no longer have an IEP and will be able to play soccer. He tells his parents this is what he wants to do. His mother, feeling guilty, submits.

Analysis: Friday, September 8–Friday, September 15

In this section, Paul comes up against his first problems that stem from living in Lake Windsor and partaking in middle-class life in Florida. He’s been kicked off the soccer team, the one activity he hoped would connect him to the community. Paul is partially blind, so he knows he is limited to playing certain positions on the field, but he’s become a skilled goalie and knows he can fulfill that role on team. His mother, however, has inadvertently made his fulfillment of that role an issue for Paul. Had she taken Paul’s IEP into more consideration, she might have discussed the consequences with the administrators, but she lives in a perpetually rushed state, as she’s clearly the only parent tending to the family; Mr. Fisher is completely absorbed in Erik’s life. Once again, Paul’s life takes a backseat to the “Erik Fisher Football Dream.”

The sinkhole event is a key plot even in the novel, as it opens up the next chapter of Paul’s life. The disaster gives him an opportunity for a fresh start at Tangerine Middle School with a clean record and no IEP. It also serves to expose the tenuous ground many of the lives in Lake Windsor are built on. The sinkhole exposes Charles Burns’s corruption and the lax zoning that likely allowed Lake Windsor to be built at all. Burns was handing out building permits haphazardly, and the schools—and likely the Lake Windsor Downs housing development—were built on unsafe grounds. Mr. Fisher is forced to look at the environment around him for the first time and take responsibility for answering questions on Charles Burns’s behalf. This moment is symbolic, since it is the first time Mr. Fisher is being pushed to answer questions about his own foundation, literally and figuratively, and foreshadows the reckoning with his son Paul at the end of the novel.

Ultimately, the community boasts a picture-perfect life that is built on burning, unsteady ground. The physical geography of the place is continually at odds with the community, disrupting their lives with lightning, sinkholes, and daily storms. The weather is a force in the novel for exposing what lies underneath the lives of the characters. Just like the homes in Lake Windsor Downs have been designed to appear perfect, the Fishers are trying to design their own lives to appear perfect, except for Paul, who is just trying to survive his adolescence.

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