Summary
We meet Theodore "Armpit" Johnson while he's working for Raincreek Irrigation and Landscaping in Austin, Texas. It has been three years since he left Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility, where he was sent at age 14 after a physical altercation with a few high school seniors who tripped him at a movie theater. At Camp Green Lake he earned the nickname Armpit as a consequence of complaining of pain that had traveled into his armpit after a scorpion sting. Armpit meets Cherry Lane, the mayor of Austin, while shoveling in the Texas heat outside her home.
After Green Lake, Armpit lived in a halfway house for six months with 17 other boys. The counselor of the house warned the group that people were going to treat them worse than before and expect the worst from them. She tells them that life will be like walking upstream in a rushing river, but that the trick is taking small steps forward. Armpit decides to take small steps for himself upon returning to Austin: graduate from high school, get a job, save his money, avoid situations that might turn violent, and lose the name Armpit.
X-Ray, Armpit's friend from Camp Green Lake, finds Armpit at his workplace. Armpit tries to ignore him because he doesn't want anyone to know about his nickname, but knows that it will draw even more attention if X-Ray continues yelling. X-Ray asks Armpit how much money he has saved, and we learn that Armpit has $857 saved and is taking two classes in summer school to make up for the schooling he missed while at Green Lake. X-Ray, who was sent to Camp Green Lake for selling bags of dried parsley and oregano to customers who thought they were buying marijuana, has a business proposition for Armpit. X-Ray intends to buy tickets to the Kaira DeLeon concert in Austin and to scalp the tickets.
We meet Kaira, a 17-year-old African-American singer who is currently on tour. She has no one to talk to or confide in, and she suspects that her therapist tells everything to her business manager and stepfather, El Genius. As for the other people in her life, she doesn't consider her mother to be someone she can confide in, her bandmates are all men in their 40s, and her backup singers resent her. Kaira is not yet halfway through her tour spanning 54 cities. Her tour didn’t originally include Austin, but as there is a monster truck rally happening in San Antonio, Austin is its last-minute substitution. Kaira’s real name is Kathy Spears, but because the last name Spears is already famous, El Genius chooses Kaira DeLeon as her stage name. Kaira grew up in a military family moving to different airbases every school year until her father was killed in Iraq. El Genius hires Fred to be Kaira's bodyguard because she's been receiving love letters/death threats from someone named Billy Boy. Kaira believes that El Genius is writing the death threat letters to scare her into staying in her hotel room and to enable him to hire a bodyguard to snoop on her and inform him of her every move. Kaira has received seven marriage proposals, but she’s never had a boyfriend.
Armpit agrees to partner with X-Ray in his scalping scheme, which requires giving up most of his savings. As soon as he says yes, Armpit regrets it. We meet Armpit's friend and neighbor, a white girl with cerebral palsy named Ginny. (Armpit is African American.) Her family moved in while Armpit was at Green Lake and they almost moved out once Ginny’s mom heard that the boy next door was a “violent criminal” who would soon be coming home. Ginny's family stayed, and Ginny's mom is glad they did because Ginny and Armpit have become good friends. When Armpit returns home from work his father asks for a drug test, which is a common occurrence. Armpit's older brother is serving eight to ten years in prison, and his parents are determined to not let him ruin his life like his brother has. This is frustrating for Armpit for many reasons, one of which is that drugs and alcohol didn’t put him in prison; it was, as he puts it, "popcorn." That is to say, he was teased and tripped by the high school seniors who tried threatening him into buying them more popcorn, which led to a brawl.
X-Ray changes the amount of money he needs from $600 to $700 because of the service fees on each ticket. This leaves Armpit with $157 in his savings.
Armpit likes a slightly goofy girl in his speech class named Tatiana. Even though she isn't traditionally pretty, she always smiles at him, so Armpit is smitten with her. Armpit gets nervous to give speeches in his speech class even when he’s prepared, and his economics teacher never teaches the class things that are on the exam.
Kaira doesn’t have access to the money she’s earning on tour and is intimidated out of asking too many questions. She’s told that there is a trust that all her money is going into but that there aren't exact figures available. The ticket that supposedly sold for $750 in Philadelphia, which is the inspiration for X-Ray's scalping scheme, is apparently a story planted by El Genius. Meanwhile, X-Ray and Armpit arrive at the ticket booth at Lonestar Arena to buy tickets to Kaira's concert. While in line, Armpit hears someone playing one of Kaira’s songs and hears the lyrics as being a plea from Kaira to Armpit. He hears the lyrics as saying “Save me, Armpit! A damsel in distress," but he feels that there is no way that he has heard it correctly. In the line X-Ray and Armpit meet Felix, one of the scalpers who have people stationed to buy tickets for them, and he tries to buy their tickets for $75 each. Because of his interaction with Felix in the parking lot, Armpit learns enough to finally understand the topics from his economics class and scores a 90% on his exam.
Armpit borrows Coo, a stuffed animal that Ginny has had her whole life, for his speech class. Once Armpit sees the ad X-Ray put in the newspaper for their Kaira DeLeon tickets, which are priced at $25 more than the most expensive ticket, Armpit calls X-Ray and yells at him because X-Ray promised to keep the prices low. Just as Armpit is telling X-Ray to lower the price of the tickets from $135 to $70, he learns that X-Ray has already sold two tickets. This exchange makes Armpit feel hopeful that they’ll sell all of the tickets before the concert.
After successfully removing the roots of a flower from deep in the foundation of the ground while working, Armpit feels a sense of satisfaction of having done good, clean work. He realizes that scalping feels like dirty work in comparison, something he doesn't believe X-Ray would understand.
Analysis
In Chapters 1-6, Sachar introduces the themes of racial prejudice, the invisible connection between people, and redemption in his writing. Within the theme of racial prejudice we can see the theme of exclusion, and poverty. While Armpit is working his landscaping job at the mayor's home, we learn that Armpit's boss has told Mayor Cherry Lane about his criminal record, which we later find out from Armpit's mother is illegal; the records of a juvenile are supposed to be private. Here we see the theme of prejudice: before Armpit even meets the mayor, she's approaching him as someone who's turning their life around from being a criminal. She's applying preconceived notions to him in light of his past.
Similarly, to support the theme of prejudice, we see Armpit's relationship with his parents as a metaphor for Armpit's relationship to the outside world. Armpit faces microaggressions throughout his daily life, and being mistreated doesn't end when he comes home. While Armpit has left prison, his home environment as well as how his parents treat him mimics the relationship between a warden and prisoner. He's subject to regular drug tests by his parents even though he has never been in trouble over drugs. According to Armpit, his time in prison was because of "popcorn," which acts as a symbol throughout this book. Popcorn symbolizes prejudice, and mistreatment or receiving brute force because of your external appearance. For example, even though Armpit was a 14-year-old boy fighting back against multiple 17-18-year-old seniors trying to get money out of him in the movie theater, because he was bigger and stronger than them (and likely also because of his race), he was sentenced to years at Camp Green Lake. The context and nuance were overshadowed by prejudice, and Armpit's victimhood and vulnerability were overlooked because of his size, strength, and race.
Within Armpit's inner dialogue, we learn that his father has dubbed Mayor Cherry Lane a "treehugger" because she's concerned with matters that concern West Austin, such as nature & forest conservation. There's a divide between West and East Austin: West Austin is a tourist destination with beautiful natural attractions, while East Austin is comprised of dry flat lands. Here we see the theme of exclusion: the exclusion of East Austin from the conversation of how to improve the city, but also a physical barrier, the highway, which separates East Austin's predominantly working-class African American population from Austin’s natural beauty, which is reserved for wealthy white people. This divide between East and West Austin is a real issue in present day Austin—not just a dramatic device invented by the author of Small Steps. The two sides of the city, separated by the I-35, have a life-expectancy differential of 11 years. The divide in the city is not only a question of natural beauty and aesthetics; the municipal neglect and lack of resources in East Austin lead to dramatically different outcomes, even down to the health of residents.
In Chapters 1-6 of Small Steps, we also see the motif of taking small steps. After Armpit's time at Green Lake, before returning to Austin, he stays at a halfway house with 17 other African American boys. The counselor tells them that the recidivism rate for African American boys is 73%, and she continues on to tell them that life will be even more unfair once they get back because everyone will assume the worst about them. She uses a simile to compare overcoming recidivism to walking upstream, highlighting the importance of taking small steps. The motif of small steps recurs throughout the book, beginning with Armpit’s walks with Ginny in which they physically take small steps because of her cerebral palsy.
The motif of small steps also supports the theme of the invisible connection between people. Kaira DeLeon's music seems to somehow protect Armpit, and also foreshadows her entering his life. For example, once Armpit is about to accept X-Ray's scalping proposal, Kaira's "Red Alert" begins playing through the speakers.
I hear a w-w-warning sound
Every time you c-c-come around.
Should you ch-chance to glance at me,
Threatens my security
Red alert!
My hands are sh-sh-shakin’
Red alert!
Stomach’s achin:
Red alert!
The proximity between X-Ray's proposal and Armpit laying out the small steps he will take on his return to Austin foreshadows Armpit's partnership with X-Ray as something that will undermine his small steps. The repetition of the chorus "Red alert!" seems to be acting as an alarm to disrupt Armpit's current train of thought and change his course of action.
