Summary
On a seemingly normal day in November 2001, Ani was in the cafeteria at Bradley. It was lunchtime, so there were many students in the cafeteria. Suddenly, there was an explosion. Some students were hurt or even killed in the initial blast. Hilary was seriously hurt (her foot was blown off) and Olivia was killed. Ani was relatively unhurt; she and some other students tried to flee from the cafeteria, but were unable to get out. Instead, they ran into a formal dining room just off of the cafeteria, and tried to hide under some tables. Within moments, Ben came into the dining room with a semiautomatic gun. He taunted the students who were hiding, and shot two students (Peyton, and a girl named Ansilee), killing Ansilee and seriously wounding Peyton. Then Ben left the room.
The remaining students (Ani, Liam, Teddy, and a girl nicknamed The Shark) discussed what to do. They were afraid they might be attacked if they left the room, and hoped that the police would be coming soon. They tried to help and comfort Peyton. However, a fire was burning nearby (from the explosion), and getting closer. Eventually, they decided to try to leave, leaving Peyton behind to die from his wounds and the advancing fire. They were able to make their way into a stairwell and climb up towards another level from which they could hopefully exit the school. However, as they climbed the stairs, Ben opened fire on them, shooting and killing Teddy. The other students rushed down the stairs, and Ani, Liam, and The Shark ran into one of the classroom floors, closely followed by Ben. Liam ducked into the first classroom he saw, but Ani and The Shark kept running. They were fairly close to an exit when they encountered Arthur. Liam ended up trapped in the classroom, and was shot and killed by Ben.
Arthur was holding a shotgun. Nearby, Dean had been injured in the explosion. Arthur told The Shark to go, and she ran off, leaving Ani and Arthur together. Arthur urged Ani to take the gun, telling her that she could use it to shoot Dean. Terrified, Ani reached for the gun but Arthur pulled back and shot Dean himself. Because Arthur was distracted, Ani seized the moment and stabbed Arthur (she took a knife from the banquet room when she fled). She stabbed him repeatedly, and Arthur collapsed, fatally wounded. Ani was able to flee from the school and get outside.
The narrative of events in 2001 continues with Ani in the hospital, grappling with shock and trauma from the events of the shooting. A psychologist named Anita sat with Ani and explained that Arthur died as a result of the knife wounds. Ben killed himself; it was apparently always the plan for Arthur and Ben to kill themselves after completing the attack. In total, five Bradley students were killed in the attack: Ansilee, Olivia, Teddy, Liam, and Peyton. Dean was alive, but would never walk again due to the injuries from when Arthur shot him. Anita also questioned Ani about Arthur. Ani explained that she and Arthur were once friends, but had recently had a falling out. However, Ani did not want to reveal that she was raped, so she was vague and evasive as to why and she Arthur fought. She implied that Arthur was angry and jealous because Ani was spending more and more time with Dean and the other popular students. Ani distracted the psychologist by confiding information about how Dean and Peyton tormented Ben, suggesting that this cruel bullying was likely the explanation for the attack.
Ani went home with her parents, unsure of what the future held. Bradley would be shut down for an indefinite amount of time. Ani's father seemed angry and distant, and both of her parents tried to prevent her from seeing the news. However, Ani insisted on watching some news coverage, and was horrified to learn that, along with the five deaths, a number of students had severe injuries, including students who lost limbs. After a few days, two detectives came to question Ani. They focused on asking Ani about Dean, including whether the two of them had recently had a fight or disagreement. Ani was unsure how to answer; her parents decided that she should not answer any more questions until she had a lawyer.
Ani met with a lawyer named Dan, and told him everything, including being repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted. She also admitted that Arthur showed her the shotgun prior to the attack, but that she did not have any idea what he was planning to do. When Dan explained that it looked bad for Ani to have handled the gun prior to the attack, she suddenly realized that she was under suspicion for having been involved in planning the attacks. With Dan present, Ani was officially questioned by two police detectives. She told them about being raped at Dean's house, and then attacked by Dean again at Olivia's house. The detectives asked Ani why, given that Dean had assaulted and attacked her, she would have tried to protect him when Arthur had the gun. Ani explained that she was focused on protecting herself, which is why she wanted to get the gun away from Arthur. The detectives countered that, since she and Arthur had been friends, it seemed unlikely he would hurt her. The detectives did not seem sympathetic to Ani, and accused her of benefiting from the attack because students who hurt her were now dead or wounded.
Ani had told Dan and the police that she was raped, but her parents still did not know. Dan offered to tell them on her behalf. Ani eavesdropped on the conversation between her mother and Dan: Dan explained that, because she was attacked, police might try to argue that Ani had motive to conspire in the attacks. He reassured her mother that there was little evidence to connect Ani to the crime. Afterwards, Ani's mother was cold and distant with her; she said that Ani was partially to blame for what the boys did to her. A week after the shooting, Ani was called back for more questioning. She met with the detectives accompanied by Dan. They accused her of having withheld information in the prior questioning, and showed her new evidence: they had found the taunting comments that allude to violence written in the yearbook by Arthur and Ani. They also had copies of the notes Ani and Arthur passed, in which they expressed their hatred for Dean and the others, sometimes jokingly alluding to killing them. Ani tried to object, arguing that she always assumed that Arthur was joking, and had no idea he would ever do anything violent. The detectives explained that Dean had given a statement about what happened on the day of the attack: Arthur offered Ani the gun, encouraging her to shoot Dean. Dean stated that Ani reached for the gun, which to him implied that she intended to shoot him. Ani tried to explain that she did reach for the gun, in hopes of getting it away from Arthur.
Ani's mother insisted that she go to Liam's funeral, even though Ani did not want to. She also forbade Ani from speaking with Mr. Larson, since she was suspicious that Mr. Larson somehow took advantage of Ani when she spent the night at his apartment. Ani went to the funeral, accompanied by her mother, and everyone shunned her. As they drove home, some friends of Peyton attempted to run their car off the road. When Bradley reopened, Ani wanted to go back because she could not bear the idea of starting over. The school administration was hesitant to allow it; while there was not enough evidence to charge Ani with any crime, many people believed that she was somehow involved in planning the attack, or knew what was going to happen. Everyone was very sympathetic to Dean, and listened to his story that Ani would have shot him if Arthur did not do so. Dean did not return to Bradley; he went to Europe to get experimental medical treatments for his injuries, and finished school there. He went on to become a best-selling author and motivational speaker. No one except Ani, her parents, Mr. Larson, her lawyer, and the police ever knew that Dean and the other boys raped her.
Stubborn and defiant, Ani endured great isolation and loneliness after she went back to Bradley. When she was still in high school, on a class trip to New York City, she saw a beautiful, stylish woman who seemed to have a high powered career. Ani was inspired, and decided to do everything in her power to achieve that kind of life.
In the contemporary narrative, after filming the interview portion in which Ani recounts the events on the day of the shooting, she is allowed to go. The plan is to go to the Bradley School the following day to film some shots. Before she leaves, Aaron makes an unspecified suggestion to Ani. Ani pauses to spontaneously text Mr. Larson, asking him to dinner that night. She goes back to the hotel, and waits restlessly to see if he responds. When he does not, she looks up his parents' home number and calls them. She has guessed correctly, and Mr. Larson is there; he agrees to meet her for dinner. During dinner, Ani confides in Mr. Larson that she worries about being believed whenever she describes the events of the shooting. Mr. Larson asks Ani why she has not ever explained what Liam and Dean did to her. She explains that it seems terrible to reveal that a boy (Liam) who was murdered at just 15 was also a rapist. After dinner, Ani suggests that she and Mr. Larson drive over to the Bradley school.
When they get to the school, one set of doors is unlocked, and Ani and Mr. Larson slip inside. As they wander around, Mr. Larson explains that Dean's wealthy and powerful parents pressured the school to fire him after he told the administration that Dean had assaulted Ani. He had only ever intended to teach for a few years, but was disappointed that he did not get to teach for longer. Ani and Mr. Larson also talk about their memories of Arthur; Ani confides that she does not feel any remorse when she thinks about killing him. She also tells Mr. Larson that she wants to break off her engagement but is too scared to do so. Mr. Larson tells Ani that he knew, prior to the dinner with Luke and his wife, that Ani was Luke's fiancé: he purposefully arranged the dinner so that he would get to see her again.
Ani and Mr. Larson are interrupted by security guards arriving at the school. They hide in a classroom while a guard looks around. However, the experience of hiding in a classroom triggers memories of the shooting for Ani. Mr. Larson attempts to comfort her, and then the two of them kiss.
Analysis
Throughout the novel, details of what exactly happened to Ani during her teenage years are withheld in order to build suspense. There are allusions to violence and trauma, but it is not clear exactly what happened. The information about Ani having been raped functions as a kind of red herring to lead readers to think that maybe that was the most significant thing to happen to her. While she is sometimes an unlikeable protagonist, it is hardly surprising that Ani has been warped into believing that the world is a fundamentally cruel and unreliable place. She is cynical and calculating because she never feels safe; her bodily autonomy and her life were threatened repeatedly, at a formative time in her life, within a matter of weeks.
Readers learn the full details of the attack at the Bradley School as Ani finally narrates it during the filming of the documentary, positioning the readers in parallel to the fictional audience who will consume the documentary. Especially because Ani has been reluctant to disclose what happened during the attacks and tried to distance herself from these events, the reader is positioned as complicit in the voyeuristic thrill of seeing the violence represented, while also knowing that it was terrible for those who lived through it. Ani's description makes it clear that she was terrified and appalled by all the violence that she witnessed during the attacks – she also experienced a specific type of shock and betrayal because she had, until shortly before the attacks, been close with Arthur. Arthur unleashing violence in some ways mirrors the sexual violence that Ani suffered at the hands of Dean, Liam, and Peyton – yet again, boys she trusted turned out to be brutal and capable of doing terrible things.
The moment when Arthur offers Ani the gun to shoot Dean is a moment of moral crisis, but Arthur prevents Ani from ultimately having to choose, because he takes the gun back before she gets to it. She therefore does not have to decide what to do: would she have shot Dean, shot Arthur, or done something else entirely? Ani does in the end kill Arthur, an action which might have saved many lives, and seems like it should have been applauded as heroic. However, it also furthers Ani's sense of herself as someone tainted: she killed someone whom she had once cared about, even if it was in self-defense. Ani's deep self-loathing is furthered because of the cruel way that she is treated in the aftermath of the shooting: most people blame her, or treat her with suspicion. Once again, much like what happened after she was raped, Ani is betrayed and let down by adult authority figures (including her parents, police, and psychologists) who do not recognize the extent to which she is a victim, and blame her for something she had no control over.
While Arthur and Ben are recognized as guilty of the crime, they are both dead after the attack, so in some ways, Ani has more suffering to endure. In both the case of the rape and the school attack, Ani is publicly treated as guilty while the boys who caused the violence evade consequences. Ani also has to grapple with the terrible moral choice of whether or not to disclose that Liam and Peyton, who are being celebrated as innocent victims, were actually rapists. While Ani is clear that she would not have wanted the boys to die the violent deaths that they suffered, she never gets closure or recognition for what happened to her. In a cruel irony, Dean also continues to victimize Ani by adding credence to the idea that she might have played a role in the attacks. Dean's conviction that Ani was reaching for the gun, intending to shoot him, likely reflects his own knowledge of what he did to her: given how he treated her, Dean would find it easy to believe (and maybe even justifiable) that Ani would want to kill him.
Dean's injuries symbolize a certain kind of justice for the way that he treated Ani: he becomes physically vulnerable and loses agency and autonomy over his body. As a former athlete, and someone whose physical power allowed him to violate and hurt others, Dean loses much of his physical power as a result of becoming disabled and requiring the use of a wheelchair. However, Dean's life after the attack also reflects the power and privilege he still wields: he is celebrated as a hero, and his version of events is taken as the truth. The way Ani and Dean are both treated after the school shooting reflects why Ani did not want to speak out about her rape: if it came down to her word against his, he almost certainly would have been believed, and she would have been accused of being a liar.
After all of the trauma Ani has endured, she became obsessed with security, power, and control. Ani desperately needed to feel safe, and did not trust anyone around her to give her that safety. Instead, Ani absorbed a powerful cultural message that two things will keep a woman safe within a patriarchal and capitalist society: wealth and beauty (and that the latter can be used to achieve the former). After seeing a woman on the streets of New York City, Ani becomes determined to achieve the life she assumes that woman has (notably, Ani is relying entirely on external impressions, and has no idea what the woman is actually experiencing). She decides that if she can be beautiful, thin, successful, and marry a wealthy man, she will be able to avoid further traumatic events.
Ani's beliefs are unrealistic, and reflect a cultural lie sold to many women. While her desire to achieve wealth and power might seem laudable, Ani is not really motivated by her own values or even her own true desires. She becomes complicit in a shallow version of female power and agency that is enticing precisely because she has experienced the true reality of how little power she actually has over her own body. As Koa Beck writes in a critique of how feminism has been warped into a deeply individualistic philosophy, "feminism was reduced to a self-empowerment strategy. A way to get things. A way to get more of the things you thought you deserved. A way to consume" (188). However, if Ani could have been powerful as a young girl, even if only powerful enough to have control over her own body, she would not have needed to orient her whole life towards a falsely alluring kind of power.
