Summary
Filming of the documentary continues. Along with the film crew, Ani goes to see Arthur's mother, Mrs. Finnerman. Over the years, Ani and Mrs. Finnerman have written letters to one another and had a friendly relationship. The documentary crew films Ani and Mrs. Finnerman talking about Arthur; the latter insists that her son was not a psychopath, and was capable of emotions and empathy. Ani privately believes that Arthur was a psychopath, because investigation after the attack strongly supports this conclusion. Most people concluded that Arthur had a greater capacity for violence and seized the opportunity to have Ben help him because Ben was being bullied. Evidence emerged that Arthur and Ben had been planning the attack for months. They intended to cause much larger casualties with multiple bombs, but most of the bombs failed to go off, so the attack was actually much less severe than intended. Ani also wonders if Arthur would have asked her to participate in the attack if the two of them had not had a falling out.
During the conversation, Ani confides that, right before the attack, she stole the photo of Arthur with his father, and has kept it all of these years. Mrs. Finnerman is shocked by this news; she becomes overwhelmed by a sudden migraine, and cuts short the interview. Aaron and Ani drive back to the hotel together, and Ani reminisces about the events of the previous night, when she and Mr. Larson were together at Bradley school. After they kissed in the classroom, they snuck out of the school, and went back to his parents' house. Ani talked about her unhappy relationship with Luke, and eventually fell asleep in Mr. Larson's bed.
Back at the hotel, Ani decides to cancel her plan to have dinner with her mother that night, and meet with Mr. Larson instead. She gets him to agree to have dinner with her, but when Ani and Mr. Larson arrive, Ani is embarrassed to see her mother and aunt also at the same restaurant. She ends up joining them while Mr. Larson slips away so that they are not seen together. She asks him to meet her later, after the dinner, but he hesitates. He is worried that more time spent together will lead to something sexual happening between them, and does not want to do something either of them will regret. In response, Ani lashes out, accusing Mr. Larson of only seeing her as a sexual object. Mr. Larson consoles her, and then leaves. When Ani goes back to dinner with her mother and aunt, she is tense and rude to them. Her mother warns Ani that Luke has confided in her that Ani has been behaving in an unusual way; both Ani and her mother worry that Luke might leave her if he continues to be frustrated by her behavior.
The next day, Ani goes with the film crew to meet with Dean. While filming a few days earlier, Dean suggested a meeting between him and Ani, and Ani agreed to the request. Ani assumed that the film crew knew about Dean raping her; however, when she and Dean first begin to speak (while being filmed) and she references these events, Dean demands that the crew stops filming. Ani realizes that the director and crew do not know the details of what Dean did to her. Dean requests that the crew leave him and Ani alone for a while, and they do. Once they are alone, Dean apologizes, and explains what he wants to be filmed apologizing for: his accusations and implications that Ani was involved in planning the attacks. He explains that in the moment, when Ani reached for the gun that Arthur offered, he truly believed that she was going to shoot him. It was not until long after that he reflected and realized that he was lashing out in anger. Dean tells Ani that once the crew is filming, he will apologize for blaming her, and he wants her to say that she forgives him. He thinks this moment will benefit their mutual reputations and public image. He sees no need to discuss what happened to Ani before the attack at the school.
Ani asks Dean if he and the other boys planned to gang rape her. He denies it. Dean explains that he did not know Liam had raped her until the next day, and he did not consider his and Liam's actions to be rape. Ani demands that Dean say out loud what he did, and Dean reluctantly states that "we raped you." Then, Ani and Dean rejoin the film crew, and film the scene in which Dean explains and apologizes for having accused Ani of being involved in the attack.
After filming the scene, Ani goes home to Luke in New York City. Almost immediately, Luke tells Ani that he has been offered the job in London. She implies that she will support this move, mentioning that she will look into finding a job for herself in London. Ani has her own proposition to discuss: the documentary crew wants to film part of her wedding to Luke, and include the footage in the documentary. Luke is somewhat hesitant, but becomes distracted from the discussion when Ani reveals that she met with Dean during the filming. She quickly reassures Luke that she did not discuss her rape (which Luke does not want her to speak publicly about), but realizes that Luke does not actually believe what happened to her to have been rape.
A few days before Ani's wedding, she is preparing to leave for the home of Luke's parents (where the wedding will be held). She finds the framed picture of Arthur and his father in the apartment garbage. Ani is shocked, because she had looked for the picture when she first got back from filming the documentary, and was unable to find it. She even asked Luke about it, and he had suggested that it might have been lost or thrown out. Ani heads to her wedding destination, but remains fixated on the discovery throughout the wedding rehearsal celebration. Finally, she pulls Luke aside, and demands to know why he threw the picture out and then lied about it. Luke admits that while Ani was filming, he had some friends over, and offered them the photo to use when doing drugs. They broke the picture accidentally, and Luke threw it away. Ani realizes that she and Luke are never going to truly understand and respect one another, and she calls off the wedding.
Accompanied by Nell, Ani leaves immediately. Back in New York, she moves in with Nell, and takes a new and higher-paying job. A month after calling off the wedding, Ani meets with the film crew again. It is revealed that when Ani spoke with Dean and insisted on him admitting to having raped her, she was secretly recording the conversation. Afterwards, she provided the recording to Aaron, the director of the documentary. He is going to incorporate the recording, and the documentary is going to reveal the full story of Ani having been raped by Dean, Liam, and Peyton prior to the attack at the Bradley School. While Ani is starting her life over, she finally feels confident and authentic.
Analysis
Ani's experiences while filming the documentary play a pivotal role in helping her to integrate her past traumas and her present life. Prior to the documentary, Ani could pretend to be completely divorced from the events of her past, especially because Luke was so disinterested in hearing about what happened to her. Through the documentary, Ani has the opportunity to speak about her experiences to a willing and engaged audience. She also reconnects with Mr. Larson, someone who views her with admiration and respect. While other people have either dismissed Ani's experiences or even regarded her as complicit, Mr. Larson openly tells Ani that he admires her resilience. While there is romantic and sexual tension between Ani and Mr. Larson, their interactions end up being mostly platonic. This is important because Ani gets to experience being liked and admired by a man, rather than simply an object of lust. Significantly, she also realizes that Mr. Larson can truly know her, everything she has experienced, and still feel affection and desire for her. The experience with Mr. Larson helps Ani to see that her relationship with Luke is not satisfying, and that she deserves more.
Even if Ani had not recorded Dean's admission, it would still have been pivotal in giving her back a sense of control over the narrative. In many cultural representations of rape, the victim is silenced, and their truth is denied. Ani reclaims a sense of power and agency when she is able to finally hear Dean say out loud the truth that so many people have tried to take away from her. This moment also helps her to get a sense of what true empowerment feels like: it comes from honesty, not from the false appearances that she maintains in her relationship with Luke.
As Ani has become more empowered and more reconciled with her past, she has found it less and less tolerable to lie and pretend in order to get Luke to love her. At the start of the novel, Ani is fragmented from her past and hates herself, so she is willing to pretend to be someone she is not. As she becomes more and more integrated, Ani comes to see what it would be like to live an authentic life, and realizes that she cannot live a lie. Ani's breaking point comes with the discovery of the framed photo, which symbolizes her past and also the reality that people are complex and ambiguous. While Arthur did horrible and violent things, he also had a gentle and caring side that was hurt when his father abandoned him. Ani saw both of these sides, and this is why she held on to the photo. Likewise, Ani herself is complex and has both dark and vulnerable sides. Luke throwing out the photo symbolically reveals that he will never be able to truly know and respect Ani. He wants the uncomfortable parts of her to simply vanish because they are inconvenient for him.
At the climax of the plot, Ani breaks off her engagement right before the wedding. This is a momentous gesture because marrying Luke (or someone like him) has been her long-term goal, and the thing that she thought would finally make her feel safe. Ani realizes that the only security she will have is the security she can give to herself; by breaking up with Luke, she is at least free to be her true self, and pursue what she wants. There are significant consequences, and Ani has to recalibrate her life: she will have less money, and she will have to grapple with being single. However, Ani's sense of freedom and confidence at the end of the novel shows that the wealth and social status she was chasing do not really matter. Ani is even able to imagine the possibility of meeting a man with whom she will be able to share her whole self.
Fueled by the empowerment she experienced when she chose to be true to herself and break up with Luke, Ani is also liberated to take one more decisive step towards honesty: she decides to go public about being raped. While she was with Luke, Ani faced significant pressure to avoid talking about these events, but once she is single, she can make the choice for herself. By unsettling her assumptions about security and power, Ani has realized that she will not gain any security by staying silent, only by finally telling the truth. Audre Lorde (a Black, lesbian feminist who was often critical of the feminism espoused by white women) wrote that, "My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you" (41), and it seems that Ani reaches the same conclusion. Ani has struggled with the idea that if she plays by the rules, exemplifies the expectations placed upon women, and performs, she will be kept safe. She finally decides to speak out instead, because her silence is potentially perpetuating the victimization of others. Significantly, when Ani begins filming, she introduces herself with her full name, reclaiming the identity and sense of power that was taken from her, and symbolizing how she is no longer going to deny anything about herself.
