Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Sorry, but I couldn't finish blogging about Hush, Hush, because I am just flying through books too fast.

I have reached my final book of this assignment. This book is called "Before I Fall" and is about a popular girl and her friends who get into a car accident, and the girl must relive this day seven times to somehow solve the mysteries around her, and discover the meaning of her life. This girl and I share a namesake: Sam. Sam and her friends :Lindsey, Elody, and Alli, are at the top of the food chain in high school. They go to all the parties and get all the boys. Sam knows that some of the things she does are not nice or fair, but she still does them because that is how it is supposed to be. She sees things so differently than I do. She feels like in high school, there is a circle, and you are either in it, or out of it. I know this not to be true because I have been right on the line. Her life is superficial in a lot of ways. Sure she has great friends and has fun, not always the best kind of fun, but she sees no wrong in that.

When she wakes up on February twelfth in her home in Connecticut, she feels normal. No foreshadowing feeling in her gut. It is cupid day, and Sam and her friends purposely dress the same, and they compete to see who will receive the most valograms, or roses. The day is great. In fact, Sam and her boyfriend Rob are supposed to make love for the first time that night. I get the feeling it isn't the smartest idea, I just can't picture it. Sam actually admits to the reader that she doesn't like the way he kisses, and she is only doing this to get it over with, because she doesn't want to make a big deal out of being a virgin. They are invited to a party at Kent Mcfuller's house. At the party there is much drinking and drama. Rob is there, completely drunk, and Sam is having second thoughts. Then a girl, Juliet Skyes; a girl Lindsey had always picked on for no reason, shows up. She looks pretty, and Sam and her friends never knew how pretty she was. Juliet walks up to Sam and her friends and calls them (individually) a...female dog. Sam is a little shocked. Everybody starts pouring booze over Juliet's head, and pushing her across the room. Sam subconsciously is doing the same, and then she tries to find the bathroom, a place to escape, and Kent tells her "I see right through you". Though Sam doesn't realize it right then, people are confronting her, and telling her that she isn't has great as she thinks she is. Leaving with her friends, they drive home in the rain. Lindsey is smoking and suddenly her cigarette drops between her thighs, Elody and Alli are fighting under the stress, and the iPod, and Sam is yelling at them trying to get them to calm down. But then the car starts to swerve and turns all over the places and into the woods. Sam has time to smell the fire burning. Then, blackness.

All of a sudden, she wakes up, and she is in her bed. The date on her phone is February twelfth. Lindsey comes by to pick her up, but shows no recollection of anything that Sam has experienced. Throughout the day, Sam thinks she is going crazy, wondering why she is living this day over again. Things happen similarly, despite a few changes. She slowly goes through the motions of the day, right through the party, and driving home, experiencing death again. And she wakes up on February twelfth.

I think Sam is going to realize the effect she has on people, and the damage she has done. I also believe she will try to make things right. This book reminds me of the movie Groundhogs Day, where the man has to relive the day until he sets things "right".

Hush, Hush- to page 128

This book was so great, I flew right through it. I will try to sum it up quicker than I usually would do, so I can move on to my next book, giving you the predictions I had at the time.

Patch continues to brood in a mysterious, dangerous, attractive manner. He tends to appear wherever she is, and Nora starts to wonder if he is stalking her. Nora finds herself feeling strange about him. She experiences strange events since she met him. A figure in a black ski mask keeps showing up in her life. The first night she see it (let's assume it is a he), he hits her car and starts tearing up the door. When she drives back to her friend Vee's house, there is no damage to the car. It just...disappeared. At this point in the book, I thought the figure in the ski mask was Patch, but he was in some sort of weird state of mind, because I didn't believe he would do act this way so openly around Nora. I didn't think he wanted to scare her like that.

The next day, Nora and Vee meet a guy, new to the school. His name is Elliot, they also meet his friend Jules. They develop a camaraderie with the two. But Nora and Vee have some sleuthing to do, they are going to sneak into the permanent records and look at Patch's file. But when Nora gets to it, it is empty. This makes it more difficult to be around him, because as much as he is seductive, he is scary. He seems genuinely interested, and if it wasn't for Nora's uneasy feeling around him, she would probably accept his invitation to go out.

Elliot is in Nora's gym class. He is a team captain, and picks Nora first, even though she is not good at sports, but he doesn't know that. He is putting on the show of showing her how to swing the bat in the whole hit-on-a-girl-by-putting-arms-around-her-and-show-her-how-to-do-something way. While she is up to bat, she hears a voice in her head, Patch's voice. She looks around, and he is standing behind the fence. He is giving her directions to the game, and he gets a home run, however freaked out about him telepathically communicating with her.

Vee and Nora meet Elliot and Jules at an amusement park. They are in the arcade, and Nora sees Patch there. Nora tries to stay clear of his path. Jules goes to the bathroom, but he doesn't come back. He seems to come up with excuses to leave a lot. Elliot offers the talk to Patch for Nora, but Nora says she will do it herself. She approaches him, and he tries to convince her to ride the Archangel with him, she refuses and goes back. She tells Vee and Elliot she needs a snack so she heads off. On her way there, she see the strange figure again. But then she runs into Patch, and he convinces her if she can ride the ride without screaming, he will tell the coach to switch seats in biology. On the ride she notices her seat belt had come undone and then the coaster veered a sharp turn and she fell out of she ride, onto the tracks and then into the air, falling to her death. But the next thing she knew, the ride pulled into platform. Freaked out, they go back to the arcade, Vee and Elliot and Jules nowhere to be found. They search the parking lot for a while, and can't call because Nora's phone is dead. She is forced to get a ride home from Patch, on his scary motorcycle. At Nora's house, Patch pretty much invites himself inside, and starts making dinner, an awkward/frightening situation. When he is holding the knife, Nora feels like she is in danger. So would I, if I were in her situation. In fact, I think I am a lot like Nora, so I would feel the same in most all situations. So she asks him to puts the knife, down and he denies any possible plans to hurt her. But before she can help it, they are almost kissing, they have an unspoken attraction it seems.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Well, I am on to my third book of the assignment. I think this is going to be my favorite. I am already 200 pages into it, and I got it last night. Hush, Hush is one of those books that could be boring, because it is long and we haven't figured out what is going on yet, even half way through the book, but it is the opposite of boring. It is riveting, a page turner. It takes place in my home state: Maine. I was excited to read a book where I could really imagine the surroundings.

The main character is Nora. She is a high school student in Coldwater, Maine. (Is this a real place? I don't believe so...) In the first chapter, she is in biology class with her best friend Vee. They are going to start a new topic, sex. They get a new seating chart. Nora is assigned to sit next to a new boy. He is a transfer, never been to school before. He has black eyes. They have to do an assignment in which they studied each other and write an essay on the other person. His name is Patch. He is a sly, cool type of guy. He is brooding, attractive, mysterious. He is flirtatious. He fills his sentence structures with subtle innuendos. But the disturbing thing is, he just knows stuff about Nora. He knows about her school clubs, her beliefs, what colleges she wants to get into, and he just goes on about it, as if he is not talking about her, provoking her. He manages to guess everything about her, and gives off nothing about himself. He seems dangerous.

I believe this book is about angels. The cover is of an angel falling from the sky, and so far in the book there have been many angel references. I will tell you my predictions when I have blogged enough for them to make sense.

...I'll Be Dead- to the end

I have finished the book, but I have definetely not finished blogging about it, so I will quickly sum it up so I can begin blogging about my next book.

Daelyn continues erasing herself. She has less than two weeks now. She spends a lot of time online. But she decides to IM Santana. She asks him if she could borrow his laptop, and spells her name out for him. On through-the-light she sees the way to go "drowning". She decides she will use this method.

The next day, Santana comes over to Daelyn when she is sitting on the bench, pulling a cart of laptops. Computer freak. She borrows his small, new laptop, telling him she only needs it for ten days.

Back online. She goes to the sexual assault forum and tells her story. A popular boy, a little older than she was, he was in eighth grade, started walking by Daelyn after school or in the halls. He got Daelyn to fall for him, though they barely spoke. One day Daelyn forgot her lunch money so she went to her locker to get it, and the boy was there in the hall with his friends. They came up to her and started provoking her. They took her money and ran into the boys bathroom and she chased them. They surrounded her, they touched her and undressed her. They left her in a stall, she was sticking and bloated. They told on her. They told the teacher that she was a pervert, hiding in there and watching the boys. She didn't tell anybody the truth, because they threatened to kill her.

Santana confronts her. The night before he had IMed her but she didn't respond. He says she should stick to the agreement that made for Daelyn to borrow his laptop, she has to communicate with him. He tells her he is lonely. He doesn't have any friends because he is homeschooled. He has Hodgkins Lymphoma. Cancer. Daelyn's not sure if she believes this. Or wants to believe it.

Emily is continuing to be nice to her. Daelyn isn't sure how she feels about that. Santana is pushing their relationship. He grabs her arm and looks at the scars there. He wants to know if she was scared. Good question. They develop an understanding. He calls her, six days before she goes. He asks her if she wants to have dinner on his birthday, which is the same day she is supposed to die. She hangs up on him.

At five days, she comes clean on the final forum for bullied. She tells the story of fat camp. She spent a summer there, in Arizona. The counselors were college students, they yelled at you and called you names. There method for making you lose weight was making you feel so horrible about yourself and making you believe that you were disgusting and ugly, so you wanted to lose the fat faster. They didn't use your name. The kids at camp were called by their weight number. At night, they played tapes to convince you that you were fat and had to lose weight in order to feel good about yourself. It was the worst experience of Daelyn's life. It didn't help her situation. They made her hate herself

At four days, Kim tells Daelyn that she will go to Santana's house in the afternoon. Daelyn doesn't want to do this. But she hasn't a choice. After school Santana is their with his Mom Ariel and they take her into their home. Everything is sterilized. Daelyn hears about their life. About Santana's dad (died before he was born). During this conversation Daelyn actually laughs. Santana hears this, and he's shocked. Ariel has to rush off to work so they are left alone. Daelyn decides she will do homework.

At two days, Chip arranges for Daelyn to go to Santana's place again after school. Oh boy. And Daelyn has been reminded that she can try to talk again now because her vocal chords are probably healed up.

In choir, a mean girl picks on Emily for being fat. Daelyn writes her a note and passes it to her. It says "She'll go to hell. They all will. If hell will even have them. Elbow me if I'm singing flat." It makes Emily laugh.

At Santana's, he orders pizza and makes root beer floats. They sit in on the living room floor while they eat, and Santana asks if she wants to watch the documentary he has made about his life with cancer. It gets a little tough to watch with videos of Santana going through chemotherapy. Santana takes Daelyn's hand. Emotions. Santana kisses Daelyn, but she pulls away soon enough. She can relate it to other times with other intentions. When she is back at home Santana messages her. He apoligizes. She knows about his life now so he asks about hers. He asks about why she has to wear the neck brace. But he says she doesn't have to answer and he signs off. But she keys back anyway. She had drank ammonia and bleach so she could die.

With one day left, Daelyn is sitting with Emily in the chapel at school. They are enjoying each others company. After a while Emily announces that her mom is sending her to fat camp. Daelyn stops. She takes Emily and says "No. Don't. Go." She SAYS it. These are the first words she has spoken in a long, long time. She speaks because she doesn't want Emily to suffer what she did, she doesn't want Emily to turn into her.

Sitting on the bench, Santana sits down next to her quietly, he says he saw her last message. He couldn't believe it. Daelyn starts to cry, and he hold her to his chest while she sobs. He says "You heal me. I heal you". Daelyn bonds herself to him. Then he says she never answered his question. And she asks him aloud "What question?". He is surprised to hear her speak. He asks her again if she wanted to have dinner with him on his birthday.

On the Day of Determination, Daelyn deletes her account. She looks around the room. There is no more Daelyn Rice. She has gotten rid of everything she ever was. Her dad calls to her. She sticks Santana's laptop in her bag and leaves. I was worried that the book would end like this; it sort of leaves it open for you to decide what happens, but I am pretty sure Daelyn chooses life. She has gotten rid of her past. She has found love, a friend. She can no longer be called "freak" anymore. The last line says "It's time. With detemination and purpose, I head into the light." By light I think she means she is heading into a new, better era of her life, and she is ready.

I'll Be Dead...-to page 74

In the fourth grade, Daelyn was invited to a birthday party. She was excited, she had never been invited to anything before. She wore a nice dress and showed up at the house. No one was home when they knocked. They turned around and saw from the second story of the house across the street, a window of girls laughing. Kim didn't get it, saying they had the wrong address, but Daelyn told her mom she had made a mistake, and they should go home. The closest she ever came to having a friend was when a new girl (like her) sat with at lunch one day. She was from a foreign country and sat with Daelyn, talking away at her. Daelyn didn't say anything, she wasn't mute then but she was close to tears that this girl was sharing her company.

Everything is numbered. Daelyn counts everything. Including the days until her life is over. She sits down on the bench, Santana on the other side. He scoots a note toward her. She decides not to ignore it. It says "I'm sorry. I didn't know you couldn't talk. I just assumed you had amazing self control. You'd have to, to spurn my advances." Yes. He says things like that. A lot. He starts playing games with her. He slides her a note asking how to spell her name with a bunch of impossible spellings, and one where she is supposed to fill in her name, asking him out. He asks if she wants him to go away she should blink once. She does. He asks if she is playing hard to get she should blink once. She blinks, then realizes what she just did...he is just taking advantage of the fact that she is mute now. Daelyn runs to the car when her mom pulls up. Santana follows. Persistence.

Daelyn does the math. Fifteen days. That's 360 hours. Her life will have come to a full circle.

Daelyn has been through a lot of bullying. Her dad, Chip, told her "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". A classic saying, that is so not true. My grandmother is an anti-bullying activist and she says: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will rip my heart out. This is absolutely true. Physical wounds heal much faster than mental wounds. This is the way Daelyn feels also. She has not gotten over any of the childhood names she was called, all the times she was excluded.

Daelyn has 2 weeks left now. She is on her computer in the morning and discovers a note Santana left her. She opens it up and it says Hervehotsu. On the back it says IM me. She doesn't want to set herself up like that. At school, she gets a test grade back. It's a D-. The girl next to her grabs her paper and extends the legs on the D so it looks like an A-. She smiles at Daelyn. Why did people have to make contact now?

By The Time You Read This...-to page 55

Daelyn's mom offers to take her for a drive to a place they used to go when she was little. She doesn't want to go but she doesn't have much of a choice. While they are driving, Kim (her mom) tells Daelyn a story about how in high school she tried out for Pom-poms. Kim isn't athletic at all so she didn't really want to, but her friend Bonnie asked her to because they had to try out in pairs. Kim realized that she actually wanted to be in Pom-poms, she had never been popular and this was her chance. They did the routine and Kim did better than she had ever done. She had her hopes up. The list came out. They were the only team where one person made it and one person didn't. Daelyn had thought that her mom had actually made it. She didn't. And it just proves further to Daelyn that she can't trust anything in life. She can't control the things that happen to her.

The place they were heading for was closed down, so they turned back around. Daelyn wonders if her mom actually knew this. When they get home, Daelyn finds that her dad has installed a router to her computer so they can monitor her websites. They are not helping her. They are just taking away her privacy. Only another reason to take her life.

Day seventeen, sitting on the bench after school. The boy, Santana is sitting there still. He is using a little laptop, reading the weather, which he loves. He is trying to attract Daelyn's attention, and pulls out his pet rat. She is repulsed by this, and tries to walk away. He apologizes and asks her to come back, and she does because it's either that or go back into the school. Her mom pulls up to the curb and runs away from him. She gets in the car and motions for her mom to drive but Santana comes up to the window and introduces himself, and his rat. Kim gets a little freaked out. Santana backs up and they drive away.

On through-the-light, Daelyn is trying to decide a way to go. She reads about carbon monoxide poisoning and jumping off buildings. She hears her dad in the hallway. She decides she wants to die at home. She doesn't want to be mutilated so badly she won't be able to be identified, she doesn't want her parents to suffer the unnecessary.

Day sixteen. Daelyn is in chorus. This is completely ironic since Daelyn doesn't have the ability to sing. It's sort of a joke. It makes the other kids feel awkward. She doesn't even pretend to sing, but she only has to endure standing there because she wants to see what the others have reduced her to: a joke.

She sits on the bench outside, Santana a mere foot or so away. If at any point in his one way conversation, she feels any sort of change of heart or attraction, she tells herself to ignore it, to push away all feeling. She doesn't want any one to come into her life now, she feels it's too late for that. It is a shame too because, as nerdy and lame as he is, Santana is a nice guy, he just has abolutely no experience with women. He starts to talk more about his life and asks if she wants to IM. But then her mom pulls up she gets in the car and Santana follows her there. He introduces himself more formally and she introduces herself back, giving away Daelyn's name. When he says Daelyn is a "women of few words", Kim also gives away that Daelyn cannot speak. Daelyn rolls up the window so she won't say anymore.

BTTYRTIBD-to page 37

I feel bad for Daelyn, because she has to eat all of her food blended. That's disgusting. I have a lot of reasons to feel bad for her. She doesn't trust her dad. She can't laugh. She is utterly and desperately unhappy.

Daelyn spends some time everyday with the unusual site through-the-light. She reads the message boards, the list of people whose date has already gone by, and she counts how old they were. She wants to go. She hates life.

She sits on the bench still, waiting for her parents. The boy still sits with her. I'm not sure if he has picked up that she cannot talk, he just thinks she is ignoring him. He tries to talk to her, make small talk, or strange talk. He tries to make her laugh, but it's too late for Daelyn, she doesn't want anybody new in her life, even if they are just preppy losers. She ignores him by reading her romance novel. Her dad pulls up at the curb, and she escapes.

On through-the-light there is a section called "ways to go". They rate effectiveness, pain and availability. She reads the section about exsanguination (bleeding to death). She reads the facts about the best way to do and realizes she had made mistakes when she had tried this. (So I was right about this being her suicide of choice). Daelyn decides she is going to rid of any trace of her existence. She is going to throw out all of her old junk, and she has twenty-one days to do it.

Next day on through-the-light, Daelyn is reading the forum. People write about how many times they have tried. Some end up in a hospital. Daelyn has had that happen. It's a hectic situation that ruins everyone's day. But it won't happen again.

Day nineteen, Daelyn writes in the forum titled Bullied. She writes about being picked on for being overweight. Others write back, they know how she feels. Her mom enters the room and Daelyn clicks down the screen. She is just saying hi, the kind of hi that you cannot wait to get over because you are busy doing something else that you don't want to continue with her right there.

She has an appointment with her parents and her therapist. From what I counter, Daelyn is an only child. That must be tough, carrying all of your parents hopes and dreams, just you alone, no one to fall back on. The therapist asks if she has been happy. Her dad says she has a friend which shocks her mom and the therapist. He is talking about the weird boy. Her mom doesn't like it. She says he is so punk or gangster. He is so far from that it's not even okay. Daelyn's mom must be not exactly in with the new. Daelyn writes a note that says no. This disappoints her parents.

I want to know if Daelyn will actually follow through with the suicide. I think she will. I think she will be happier that way.

By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters- to page 12

I have started by second book. It is about a girl named Daelyn, who is dumb (in the sense that she can't talk). She is under 24-hour suicide watch. She wants to die. As soon as possible. She narrates the story somewhat sarcastically, subtly I think. She finds a website called Through-the-Light.com, where people go for suicide. After she clicks yes on the terms and agreements and all the questions, the site asks her to press her finger to the screen. Please wait., it says. Daelyn swore she felt heat go touch her finger. It asks her another question to which she answers yes and the text says "Thank you Daelyn Rice". She never gave the website her name. The computer had taken some sort of fingerprint maybe. It gave her an ID, which was some numbers and some letters. But the funny thing was, the numbers were her birthday. The site tells her that her "Date of Determination" (DOD) will be in 23 days. (The book is set up so that the chapters are days, chapter one is 23 days, chapter two [this one] is 22 days...etc). She wants the date to be sooner, but the date has to be at least 23 days away.

She sits everyday, reading on a bench waiting for one of her parents to pick her up. Lately this boy has been coming up to her and sitting next to her everyday. As she is reading, he starts to dance in front of her, which both Daelyn and I think is really lame. She ignores him and her dad pulls up. They go home for the night.

I am anxious to know why Daelyn is this way. I also want to know what is going on with the boy. The picture on the cover of the book is intriguing me also, the rose petals; they may be symbolic but I'm not sure. She also appears to be naked, and possibly in a bathtub. Some people kill them selves in bathtubs, they bleed themselves until the blood loss is so significant, they can no longer live. This may be her suicide of choice.

After-to the end (page 350)

Dom calls Dr. Bacon to the stand. This was one of the most interesting parts of the book for me, because I finally got to know what was going on inside Devon's head. Dr. Bacon says that denial is a defense mechanism, and this is what Devon used. Devon's painful reality was when she first had sex, and that triggered everything else. She denied to herself that she ever had sex at all. So, in her head, it never happened, so she couldn't possibly be pregnant. She denied this because she did not want to be like her mother, she was determined to be the extreme opposite from her mother. Devon set up rule number one: no sexual activity, and then she broke it, which is unforgivable in her mind. Devon did not use protection because if she did, it would have been like she had planned to have sex. Not only did Devon deny it, but everyone around her did also. Either they didn't notice or they didn't say anything. So, it came time for the birth. For eight or nine months, no pregnancy or baby existed for Devon. Most women would be picking out clothes and names and nursery wall colors, but for Devon there was no baby. So when it finally came, she had to continue to hide it, just like she had been doing to herself and others. To Devon, the baby wasn't a living thing. So she scooped it up with all the evidence and threw it away. Out of sight, out of mind. Devon is somewhat shocked that Dr. Bacon had concluded all of this from the few times she has spoken with her. Dr. Bacon continues to say that most women who abandon their babies are not planning to kill their baby. It's just a matter of panic. Devon realizes she's not the only one.

The prosecutor has his closing remarks. He talks about how this baby was destined to the landfill, an anonymous graveyard. Devon wonders if she really had meant for that to happen. Devon remembers more. She comes back from the kitchen with a trash bag, intense pain all over. She sees IT flailing in the sink, she peers into the basin, hesitates for a moment and then tosses a towel over the baby and scoops it up and bundles it into the bag. She empties the waste basket into the bag also, and heads outside to the garbage bin behind the apartment. She yanks open the lid, closes her eyes and drops the bag amongst the other trash.

Dom makes her closing remarks, contrasting with the prosecutor who spoke of a plan, Dom says the whole story was of a lack of a plan. Devon never planned any of this. She says Devon should stay in the juvenile detention center because she needs therapy, and adult jail does not have that. The judge comes to a decision, whether or not to keep Devon at Remann Hall until trial or not. He decides that Devon will stay in custody here until the trial. Dom congratulates Devon. Devon's mom is excited. They had one. But Devon still feels like she lost.

Devon, her mom, and Dom step into the conference room. Dom is happy, talking about all the possibilities and how she thinks they have a good chance of winning. "This whole thing could go away," she says. But Devon says she wants to plead guilty at the trial. She knows what she did was wrong, and she feels bad about it. She had hoped her baby was dead, even though she never planned to kill it. She knows she should have to face the consequences, even if it means giving up some of her life. She wants to plead guilty because she is guilty. Dom complies, promising Devon the best deal she can get. Then, Devon feels free. She is no longer bound to this. She has won.

After- to page 326

The state calls Dr. Kaital, the doctor who examined Devon in September, and tries to get the doctor so say whether or not he though Devon was trying to decieve him, but there is an objection from Dom. The prosecutor finishes, and Dom cross examines Dr. Kaital. Basically, to keep it short, she comes up with the fact that it is common umongst pregnant women to spot, and a lot of female teenagers have irregular periods, so Devon could have easily mistaken this from menstruation, a reason she from which she could conclude that she wasn't pregnant.


The judge calls a lunch break. Dom says they are doing well. Devon's mom shows up, cheery and bright as if nothing bad has happened. Her mom breaks down, being as emotional as she is. She apoligizes for not coming to visit her. She says she had gone to visit her mother, whom she hadn't seen in seventeen years. She had also gone to see Devon's baby, but the nurse wouldn't let her, because the baby had been put into foster care, with so many families wanting to take her in, which is good so the baby can have a normal life. Her mom asks her why she didn't tell her. She had been through all of that before, she had given birth to Devon when she was just sixteen. Devon realizes this. Her mom had been through similar stuff, yet she hadn't tried to kill Devon. Dom comes back in, and says she isn't going to put her mom on the stand because she's too unpredictible.

Dom calls Henrietta to the stand. Henrietta nods her head and says 'okay' a lot. She states that Devon is a very special girl, and she has gotten to honor status faster than any other Henrietta has ever seen. She says Devon is very smart and responsible. After Henrietta, Dom calls up Devon's coach, Mark Dougherty he says that Devon has always been a leader, a responsible player, one of the hardest workers he has had, and one of his favorite athletes and students. He talks about how Devon can be hard on herself, if she misses a ball, she gets quiet and goes off on her own for a while. The prosecutor cross examines. He asks the coach if he was aware that Devon's injuries her not covered on her medical record. He says her record must be incomplete, he says that he trusts her enough to know what is best for her. If she says she couldn't play, he takes that seriously and believes she has a good reason for it because she sometimes shows up to practices coughing and sneezing, still doing whatever she can to play. The prosecutor asks if she had told him she was pregnant, he would have helped her? He says if she had trusted him enough, he would have done everything her could to help her. He and Devon met eyes then. He says he would have been one hundred percent there for her.

Dom calls Debbie Evans to the stand. Devon has babysat Debbie's twins for two years. She says Devon has at times, babysat the kids from eight AM to five PM. She fed them, played with them, and even helped potty train them. Debbie says that she did a better job than the previous college nanny they had hired. Devon didn't do anything wrong then. Dom asks if, knowing Devon's charges, would she ever have Devon babysit her children again? She says yes, and she says she did not believe Devon actually planned on hurting her baby. Debbie steps down. Devon realizes that all those people - Coach Mark, Debbie, Henrietta, Kait, her mom-they don't hate her. They care about her. With this epiphany, Devon starts to cry.

I will give you the end of the book soon. :)

After- to page 286

Devon goes inside the conference room to talk to Dom. She doesn't tell her about what she had remembered. Dom tells her that she went to speak with her soccer coach. He told Dom that Devon had had an injury that incapacitated Devon for several weeks and she could not play. Dom holds no record of this. Devon didn't lie about the injury, but she didn't go to a doctor, too expensive. She looked up her injuries online and some treatments as well. She didn't tell anyone. Dom tells her that she robbed her mother an opportunity to make a good decision for her. Dom thinks it's all crap. She accuses Devon of being afraid that the doctor would find she was pregnant. But Devon didn't know she was pregnant. Though, she looks back on it all and wonder if she really didn't know. Her subconscious might have been telling her that. She should have known, she thought this to herself. She noticed a bump on her stomach, she thought she was getting fat. She started wearing looser clothes because they were comfortable. She avoided looking at herself, or touching herself.

Dom questions her about her friends. Devon has one close friend, Kait. Everyone else is more like an acquaintance. Devon doesn't talk much, she sits quietly and lets the conversation flow around her. But she never told anyone about Conner. The next morning, Devon asks herself these questions, lying in bed. She thinks back over the last few months. She realizes how alone she had been. She had been invited places, to parties or study groups, but she declined. Most days at school she had eaten lunch in the library or not at all. She would sit in the bathroom or someone else away from people. Why had she pushed away and repelled herself from everyone and everything? Eventually, the calls and invites stopped coming. Nobody bothered talking to her in the halls between classes. Only her mom and her coach tried to stay engaged. Kait was hard to shake off. She constantly was asking Devon if she was mad at her, or where she has been. Kait finally wrote Devon a letter, and put it into her locker, but Devon crumpled it and threw it into the trash, Kait standing right behind her, unbeknownst to Devon until after, and then Kait stayed away too.

She gets out of bed, earlier than Wake Up time. She paces around and sees Ms. Coughran outside her window. Ms. Coughran sees her too, and opens Devon's door and tells her she wants to talk to her. She has gotten Devon's report cards and such and sees how smart Devon actually is. She says that she wants Devon to be part of a program in the center -with two others-so she won't fall behind on her grades, because the school at the detention center is based at a seventh grade level. She also tells Devon that the staff wants to bump her up to Honor status.

In class later that day, Karma is back, and there is a woman in a wheelchair there to talk to the class. Karma sits down next to Devon and tries to provoke her again, but Devon talks back this time, she stands up for herself, and tells Karma to back off. The woman- Paula- starts to talk. She talks about how she got into a wheelchair. All the girls get hooked on the story. She was seventeen, and was the first to drink at a party, and then she dove into a swimming pool that was only four feet deep, and she broke her neck. At some point in the story, Karma and Devon glance at each other and Karma smiles shyly. The speaker talks about how the first thing people notice about her is her wheelchair. She says she has a life sentence. When she was young she made some bad decisions that she has to suffer the consequences for now. But the girls before her don't have a life sentence. They have a second chance. They shouldn't let the past define you they are. There is still tension between Karma and Devon, but they are slowly arriving to better terms. Ms. Coughran has them right a paper about a bad decision that they have made and a consequence for themselves and people around them. The girls are actually attentive and thoughtful. Devon thinks for a while. She chooses to write about being alone and how she repelled everything away. If she hadn't isolated herself, and had opened up and trusted, where would she be? Possibly-not here. It's never a good thing to be alone.

The next day, Devon has her hearing. She is up early, groomed and presentable as possible. She learns that she will be sitting next to Dom the whole time. Dom tells her the people who have testified, some will be there and some have written letters: Her coach, Ms. Coughran, Henrietta, her guidance counselor, a mother of some children she babysat, Kait (found this out later than present) and her mom. They enter the court room, Dom has given Devon a pad of paper to write stuff down-anything she wants Dom to say, or wants to ask. The judge enters, her mom says hi to her from behind, but she doesn't reply. The prosecutor begins his opening statement. He goes on for a long time about the negatives about Devon and how she neglected this baby when it was a figure the baby is supposed to rely on. Then the defense (Dom) makes a small opening statement just telling the judge to keep and open mind. The prosecutor calls his first witness, the man you first found the baby, inside a trash bag, shaking violently and blue all over from lack of air. The next witness is Detective Ron Woods, the man who came to Devon's house and found out that she was the one who did it. The prosecutor asks if Jennifer Davenport gave him permission to enter the house, he says yes. Devon goes back in her memory and runs over the situation, never did her mother formally say that he could enter and never did he ask. Devon writes a note to Dom telling her that she didn't give him permission, she was hitting on him. They request a recess.

If they can prove that her mother did not give permission to this man to enter the house, the evidence found inside would not be admissible in the court. Back in the court room now, Dom questions Ron Woods, and finds that he was not formally invited into the Davenport residence. The next witness is the baby's pediatrician, Dr. More. They discuss a bruise that was found on the baby's head, most likely "blows to the head by the hand of the mother".

Devon remembers That Night. She was terribly frightened. She didn't know that she was pregnant until it happened. She was under an incredible amount of stress and physical pain. Still, I cannot understand her state of mind. If it were me, I think...I know I would have handled the situation better. She cut the umbilical cord with a pair of clippers and shoved what was still attached to her back up inside herself. The baby lay on the floor in between her legs, screaming. Devon couldn't take the screaming. It was all too much. She picked up the baby by its head, her hands pressed together ever so slightly, telling it to shut up. The bathroom was covered in blood, urine and other gunky liquids. She was worried that her mom would freak out if she saw this, which, if I do say so myself, wasn't exactly the biggest situation at hand. For what I conclude, Devon did not love this baby. She did not care for it at all. She wanted all of this to go away. She wants to clean everything up, so she picks up the baby to put it in the sink, but intense pain breaks out across her abdomen and the baby slips from Devon's grasp and slides into the sink, the unsupported head snapping back and slams into the faucet. She heads into the kitchen for a trash bag. This part made me sick, for obvious reasons. To me, hurting a child is one of the worse things you could ever do. They are too innocent, too helpless.

I will post up to what I have read tomorrow (309), this blog is getting too long!

I Remember Where I Was When...

...I came to visit my kindergarten class. I had moved away a few months prior, and I came back to say hello, which usually wouldn't happen, so it is sort of a strange event now that I think about it. I was escorted by my mother into the somewhat familiar walls of my old school, Eliza Libby-with the mascot of a sneaker. I stepped into the doorway of that classroom that had always seemed so big to me-the cubbies, the desks, the bookshelf, still all where they were before. I hadn't taken two steps when I was bombarded with my old classmates. The strange thing was, I couldn't remember who they were. I had no recollection of ever being with these strangers. It was uncomfortable. That is the only thing I remember. I can't remember why I was there at all, or what we did after things settled down. I just remember the feeling of unease.