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David LevithanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Today A is Amy Tran, and for the first time ever, A decides to hijack his person’s life. A does not follow the routine that she knows Amy would follow. Instead, A acts on A’s own desire, going to find Rhiannon at her school, an hour away.
On the drive there, A hears the same song on the radio that A heard when she was with Rhiannon, heading to the ocean: “I feel the universe is telling me something. […] The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs” (52). A knows that s/he is doing something s/he has never done before, insisting on holding on to someone for more than 24 hours, and s/he feels as if the song symbolizes fate, giving A its blessing.
When A arrives at Rhiannon’s school, s/he pretends to be a new student. A finds Rhiannon almost immediately. As s/he gazes on Rhiannon from afar, s/he can see that Rhiannon’s “sadness has returned” (54). Clearly, her relationship with Justin has not improved over the past few days. A, as Amy, asks Rhiannon for help showing her around the school. A hopes for some recognition, but of course there is none. Rhiannon is kind to her, the stranger, unlike most people, who “are instinctively harsh to strangers. They expect every approach to be an attack, every question to be an interruption. But not Rhiannon” (54).
A loves seeing this kindness and openness in Rhiannon. Rhiannon offers to take A to classes, introducing Amy to her friends, and even Justin, who barely acknowledges the two of them. At lunch, A begins asking questions about the ocean, testing to see how much Justin knows of the memory. But Justin barely answers, and it is Rhiannon who speaks up, saying, “‘We had such a great time.’ […] And it’s making [Rhiannon] happy—the memory is making her happy. Which only makes [A] sadder” (57).
At the end of the school day, Rhiannon walks A to her car. Before they leave one another, A says, “Tell me something nobody else knows about you” (59). This catches Rhiannon off guard, but she shares a story about when she was ten years old and tried to pierce her own ear. A shares with Rhiannon a story from one of A’s many lives. S/he tells her about a time when she read Judy Blume’s Forever and was upset that the boy had given a name to his penis, but the girl didn’t have a name for her vagina, so she decided to name hers “Helena.” This gets a big laugh from Rhiannon. They say their goodbyes.
When A gets home, worried that maybe Amy’s family has reported her missing to the police, she finds out that no one has even noticed that Amy was gone.
A states, “Something is wrong the minute I wake up the next morning” (61).This is because A wakes up drug-addicted. The reader never learns the name of this person. The reader never even learns the gender of the person. The person is simply referred to as “the body” (61). A struggles to get through the day without any drugs, but the need for drugs is so incredibly strong that it’s hard for A to resist. S/he knows if s/he leaves the room he is in, drugs will be readily available and too great a temptation, so s/he doesn’t leave, not even for the bathroom. A tries to read, in order to distract him/herself, but it is unbearable: “The body is screaming” (62). It is a battle to resist the addiction until, finally, it is the end of the day and “the body wants to sleep” (65).
Today, A is Nathan Daldry, “a good guy” (66). It is clear to A that Nathan leads a well-ordered life, in marked contrast to the drug-addicted person from the previous chapter. A decides to hijack Nathan and take him to a party that the real Nathan would never dream of going to. The party is at Steve Mason’s house, and this is where A expects to see Rhiannon.
When A sees Rhiannon alone, A starts talking to her, claiming he is Steve’s cousin. A pretends to hate Steve for his Justin-like behavior, which gets her attention. He also says that he is gay, hoping to appear less threatening to her. This also makes him non-threatening to Justin as well, who is fine with the two of them dancing together, once he thinks Nathan is gay. A and Rhiannon enjoy dancing with each other so much that they focus only on each other, and their surroundings slip away. It recalls the feelings they had when they were at the beach, although Rhiannon has no idea who Nathan really is: “We are paying attention to each other and we are paying attention to the enormity. The room has no ceiling; the room has no walls” (74). They dance until the music stops and the warning goes out that the police are on their way. They exchange email addresses before leaving.
Once A’s on his way home, he realizes the time. He won’t be home by midnight, which is the time when he switches bodies. He does not want to be conscious during the switch; the pain of switching bodies is too intense. At 11:50, he pulls over to the side of the road and immediately falls asleep.
In these chapters, we see that A goes beyond simply thinking about Rhiannon; instead, A does something s/he never has done before. S/he uses their person to seek Rhiannon out. First as Amy Tran, A goes to Rhiannon’s school, pretending to be a new student. Then, as Nathan Daldry, s/he finds out that Rhiannon will be at a party, so A goes to the party. A will do anything to see and talk to Rhiannon. S/he knows this is breaking all of her “rules” about how A should treat the person s/he is inhabiting, but her desire to connect with another, which s/he normally suppresses, drives their actions. It raises the question of how far A will go to pursue their own desires at the expense of the host person.
The Amy and Nathan chapters sandwich a very different chapter. When A inhabits the person of a drug addict in Chapter 5, the painful drive for drugs is so strong, s/he must use all of their strength to resist it. The chapter shows the power of drugs on the body, even when the mind is strong. Reflecting on the power of addiction, A thinks, “You mess with the wiring and the wiring takes charge” (61). The body has been rewired to crave the chemical it’s addicted to, and s/he knows the power of the body to demand what it wants. A cannot change the life of this addict (or anyone for that matter) in one day. A’s only goal is to survive. S/he gets through the day by trying to remember that this pain is only for one day and by trying to think of Rhiannon. But even Rhiannon barely makes it in to the chapter, as the body’s cravings are too strong.
By David Levithan