“My mind”
Right from the moment he wakes from his coma, Chase initiates a relationship between himself and his own mind that is based on a strange sense of distance. Imagery accumulates as the result of the persistent quality of this relationship as Chase speaks out own mind almost as if it were something external to not just his body, but those aspects which reside in the mind: memories, thoughts, emotions:
“My mind is a black hole”
“My mind is reeling. How am I going to explain to this welcoming crowd that I haven’t got the faintest idea who any of them are?”
“My mind plays tricks on me.”
“My old life. I allow my mind to sift through the idea.”
Invisible Bullies
Chase’s bullying of Joel takes things to an extreme that most students do not experience, even if they might wish they had. Many kids do not enjoy the benefit extended to Joel: being in a family financially able to pluck him from his miserable existence and send him to a school far away. He paints with vivid imagery the invisible bullies that torture such daily victims of undisciplined psychopathy in our schools even outside those supposedly safe confines:
“There’s something about being bullied that you could never explain to someone who hasn’t had it happen to them. It’s worse than the sum of the rotten things that are done to you. Even when no one is bothering you, you’re still under attack because you’re dreading the next strike, and you know it can come from anywhere, at any time. You get so paranoid that with every single step you’re half expecting the floor to yawn open and swallow you whole.”
You Are What Others Think
One of the lessons the book teaches is that you are what other people think you are. Deep inside as well as exhibited outside when no one is around to notice, a person can be the very definition of kind and gentle, but if they routinely act like a jerk when around others, they can only be a jerk to those others. Chase learns this lesson in the hardest way with the sudden shift toward no longer glorifying in his role as a terrorizing bully in a school where people only think of him as a terrorizing bully:
“…most of the kids act kind of odd around me. Conversations end when I enter a room. Faces turn toward lockers as I make my way down a hall. I get that the whole school’s heard the story of my amnesia and they’re a little weirded out by me. But that doesn’t explain everything. This one girl who’s pushing a rolling cart of textbooks—when she sees me walking next to her, her eyes just about pop out of her head. She spins away and slams into the wall of a doorway alcove. Books go flying in all directions. She trips on one and starts to go down, so I grab her arm just to steady her. Then she really loses it.”
“Alpha Rat”
Alpha Rat is the denigrating nickname that Shoshanna gives the big bad bully of her brother Joel. For must the book, it is practically the only way she refers to Chase. It is a combination of Alpha Male—since Chase is the clear leader of his little gang of jerkwards—and, well, a rodent who feasts on the weak and scurries away from any harsh light that grows too intense. Even when she softens, the nickname is still at the forefront of her memories:
“Just like Mr. Solway has become a part of my life, so has the kid that Joel and I call Alpha Rat. To be honest, I hardly ever think of him by that nickname anymore. I want to. I know it’s an act of Weber family loyalty. And I’m on board with that. I could give a college-level symposium on all the reasons why Chase used to be the rattiest rat ever to drag his rat tail through the primordial ooze. That’s not the point. There’s no question he was ratty then . The problem is he isn’t very ratty anymore . He’s like a version 2.0 of himself with all the bad stuff written out of the programming.”
