Summary
The ninth chapter is narrated by Molly. She lives in Crandale, a lightly fictionalized version of the wealthy New York City suburb Scarsdale, and her parents recently divorced. She describes her adolescent pain about being excluded by her sister Stella. She talks about the various places she goes to cry. She is hanging out with Stella and Stella's friend Iona. They eat sandwiches together and then she is abruptly abandoned by them. She admiringly reflects on a time in which her mother helped put Stella in her place by throwing a party and not inviting her. She goes to the women's locker room at the town's country club and cries. She overhears a conversation between her neighbor, Stephanie Salazar, and Kathy Binghamton, whom Molly recognizes as the unofficial queen of the mothers of Crandale. They talk in a way that makes Molly unsure if they are friends or not.
Molly goes to the snack bar and encounters a girl named Lulu in line. She realizes this girl is someone who used to attend her school, but had to leave when her mother went to prison. They order and eat hamburgers together. Molly attempts to abandon her and seek out Stella, so she throws away their trash and uses the restroom. When she returns, Lulu is still there and she has been joined by Chris Salazar, who Stella has a big crush on, and Colin Binghamton. Lulu says they are leaving, but didn't want to do so without telling Molly, which makes her feel guilty and appreciative of Lulu's thoughtfulness. Colin says he wants to take them to a special spot.
While walking out of the country club, they encounter Stella and Iona, who Molly decides to not pursue. They ride their bikes to a pier by a river. Colin and Chris smoke marijuana together. Then, all four of them lay down on the ground and look up at the sky. Colin flirts with Lulu and Molly asks Lulu to be her "secret friend." They fall asleep briefly and are almost late to drop Lulu off with her mother. They rush back to the country club. Lulu leaves and the mood is briefly deflated. Chris and Colin invite Molly to join their weekly games of Dungeons and Dragons, hosted by Chris's uncle Jules. Molly sits alone for a moment and looks up at the moon.
The tenth chapter is written in the second person and takes place in an unnamed coastal location. It follows Lulu, as a thirty-year-old adult, as she takes part in the "Citizen Agent" program, in which civilians are trained to infiltrate the confidence of dangerous, powerful men, by posing as "beauties." She writes in the second person, as she filters all of her thoughts as instructions for her mission, and periodically disassociates from herself, as a means of survival during horrible moments. She catches the attention of her designated "mate" and they swim in the ocean to a rocky shore. They have sex on the beach. She disassociates to suppress the revulsion she feels for him, noting the importance of choosing the right moment to do so. They return to land, where she follows him into a villa. She records some of his conversation and then, during a nap, sends out a signal to her husband that she is safe. She thinks of him briefly before returning to her mate. They have dinner and she claims that she is divorced. After the meal, she looks up at the moon and reflects on her desire to connect with her birth father, a movie star client of her mother's who she never told her about. She then adds that she must avoid this kind of ponderous thought during the mission, as it is distracting.
She gets on a speedboat with her mate and they travel to a faraway shore. She meets their host as well as an "alpha beauty," a woman who clearly has status above all of the other "beauties" in the man's home. The two men begin to discuss private matters. Lulu is allowed to stay while the other woman is asked to leave. After a gunshot is heard, the woman's mate flees to the boat, abandoning her. Having attempted to activate the camera implanted in her eye, Lulu is temporarily blinded, leaving her stranded. She is rescued by the other woman and brought inside to wash off. She realizes she is now in the possession of the new host. He violently has sex with her in the shower of his bathroom. Later in the evening she sneaks into his bedroom and discovers that the other woman is actually the mother of his child, and sleeps in the same bed as he does. She uses her "data surge" capability to steal information from the man's phone and other technology. This awakens the man and woman. The woman grabs a gun and shoots Lulu in the shoulder. Fending them off with "primal scream," another of her body modification abilities, Lulu escapes to a speedboat which she uses to get to an extraction point. Lying on the floor of the boat and close to death, she is rescued by a helicopter.
The eleventh chapter is narrated by Hannah, Molly's sister, as she depicts the period immediately preceding her parents' divorce. She has a different opinion of her mother, Noreen, than Molly does, finding her to be overly intense and deeply embarrassing. She describes her mother's continual conflict with their neighbor, Stephanie's brother, Jules, as well as her father's disapproval of her fixation on him. Hannah is more sympathetic to her father. One day, at dinner, her father makes a rude comment about her mother, saying she has always been "off the rails." All of his kids tell him to apologize. Hannah also describes her mother's social exclusion from events held by the other mothers in their town. One day, her mother has a dramatic standoff with Jules on Stephanie's lawn. Stephanie tries to calm them both down as Noreen argues with him about the property line. Jules yells at her, and Stephanie eventually goes back inside. Noreen sleeps on their lawn to prove a point, much to Hannah and her father's mortification.
Shortly thereafter, Stephanie invites Hannah and her family to a spring party she is throwing. Everyone except Hannah's mother is keen on going, and eventually, at her father's insistence, her mother decides to come. Upon arriving, her mother immediately asks where Jules is. Stephanie informs her that he is upstairs but asks her not to bother him, as he is upset by the presence of his recently married ex-girlfriend. Hannah's mother charges upstairs and begins opening doors, as Hannah tries to stop her. However, upon finding Jules, she does not berate him, but instead tells him he can rebuild his life, offering a strange sort of pep talk. Jules and Noreen walk outside and Hannah describes everyone at the party being momentarily happy. Remembering advice her mother gave her once, she chooses to end the story there.
Analysis
The kind of love associated with friendship is explored in Molly's chapter. She spends the first part of the chapter depicting her unbalanced friendship with Stella. Molly frequently feels dependent on Stella and is very upset when she rejects her or pushes her away. Stella constantly withholds her approval and warmth, seeming to toy with Molly's emotions. In contrast, Lulu, Chris, and Colin show a much more open, uncomplicated kind of love for Molly, as they invite her to do things and go places without any kind of manipulation. This is evidenced when they ask her to join them at the pier and tell her she is welcome to join their weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. The happiness Molly experiences at the end of the chapter seems to suggest that she has realized how important it is to be loved openly in this way by her friends.
Lulu's chapter is largely about the need to perform a role. Throughout the chapter, she depicts the various ways in which she is supposed to act in order to draw in and please her designated "mate." Not unlike the "proxies" described in Lincoln's chapter, she replicates certain patterns of behavior in order to give the appearance of something that she is not. The chapter unfolds as a series of instructions about what she is supposed to do, and how she is supposed to act, as a "beauty." This frequently requires her to suppress herself and, at times, disassociate from the situation entirely, to gain her mate's confidence. As evidenced throughout the chapter, this process is very challenging, as she is constantly reminded of her real life.
This process also informs the perspective of the chapter. It is written in second person, as the narrator, presumably Lulu, filters all of her thoughts, perceptions, and memories through the lens of her mission. As a result, part is written as instructional material for her espionage role. This speaks to the singleminded dedication that is being asked of her, as well as the disassociation technique she uses to temporarily avoid the psychological damage inflicted by these men. The way in which she chooses to narrate these events shows the reader that she does not view them as part of her actual life, but instead sees them as happening to the person she is pretending to be for the job. However, it becomes apparent later on that this choice primarily helps her in the moment, but does stave off lingering trauma.
A key part of Hannah's chapter, fitting with the theme of storytelling, is choosing when to conclude a story. From Molly's earlier chapter, the reader knows that their parents will get divorced. Hannah's perspective explains this occurrence clearly, as she shows the growing marital discord, and breakdown of healthy communication, between them. Additionally, she is deeply embarrassed by her mother's strange behavior and intensity. In particular, she does not understand her strange fixation on Jules, their neighbor Stephanie's brother.
Things seem to reach a climax when they attend a spring party Stephanie throws and Hannah's mother locates Jules, who is not attending the party because his ex is present. Surprisingly, she expresses support for him, telling him he can rebuild his life without his ex. Hannah then describes a particularly happy moment at the party, as her mother and Jules stand by the fence. She chooses to end the story there because, as her mother told her, it is good to know when to walk away. She chooses to end there as opposed to with the exact circumstances of her parents' inevitable divorce. This statement shows that Hannah believes the tone of an ending is largely determined by where it occurs in a story.
