51 pages • 1 hour read
Holly JacksonAs Good As Dead
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 2, Chapters 42-47Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapters 42-44 Summary
Pip lugs Jason’s body into the woods while Ravi cleans out the interior of his car to remove all traces of Pip’s presence. Afterward, they use gasoline to torch the Green Scene warehouse and Jason’s car. The intention is to alert the police. Pip and Ravi return Max’s car to his driveway at 3:27 in the morning. Pip slips inside the house to return Max’s phone and remove the duct tape from the yard cameras. Max is still unconscious from the Rohypnol.
Back at home, Pip spends the rest of the night shredding all her bleached clothing and flushing every bit of evidence down the toilet. This process takes hours since she can only flush small quantities at a time. By dawn, she bags all the other items that aren’t flushable and deposits them in various dumpsters far from her house. By the time Pip finishes, her parents’ alarm clock goes off. They are planning a family outing to Adventureland, but Pip pleads illness. She claims she was up all night with stomach flu. Her ragged condition makes her story plausible, and her parents leave her to sleep the day away.
In the days to come, Pip scans the news tensely, waiting for the story of the murder to break. The fire was set on Sunday morning but isn’t reported on TV until Wednesday. At that point, Detective Hawkins gives a statement ruling Jason Bell’s death a homicide. Pip intends to lead the police to their killer: “They just had to know where to look for him. Pip could give them a nudge in the right direction, to find the person behind all that evidence she’d left for them. She had the perfect, expected, normal way to do it. Her podcast” (376).
Part 2, Chapters 45-47 Summary
Pip conducts a podcast interview with the owner of the local café, who saw a fight break out between Max and Jason after Max’s acquittal. Jason knows that Max date-raped his daughter, Becca, indirectly leading to daughter Andie’s death. The two get into a shoving match, and threats are exchanged. Pip later edits Max’s name out of her interview, but she knows Hawkins will reach the right conclusion: “Pip was making it so easy for him. All he had to do was follow, step into the world she was creating just for him” (378).
After her podcast airs, Pip receives a phone call from Hawkins asking her to come to the station. Fighting nervousness, she agrees. Hawkins has heard the podcast and knows who the most likely culprit is. He also knows that Pip agreed to settle Max’s lawsuit, which seems out of character. Hawkins then asks Pip to confirm her whereabouts on the night of the murder, which she can easily do. She feels confident that she is controlling the interview until the detective starts asking about her headphones. She identifies the brand, and Hawkins pulls a pair out of an evidence bag. They have a sticker on them: AGGGTM. Pip admits they are hers, but they were found in Jason Bell’s home.
Pip is frightened but tries to keep herself under control. She casually mentions that she must have misplaced the headphones a week earlier. In reality, she knows that Jason kept them as a trophy of her kill. He must have gone through her backpack when she was tied up in the trunk of his car. Hawkins seems suspicious of Pip’s explanation but lets her leave. Back at home, Pip makes the desperate decision that she must confess. She doesn’t want to implicate Ravi, her friends, or her family. The only way out is to sacrifice herself.
Chapters 42-47 Analysis
This segment concludes Pip’s efforts to erase her presence from the crime scene. As in the previous set of chapters, she demonstrates her resourcefulness and expertise in manipulating police expectations. This is the dark side of the theme of Justice Denied. Pip’s disillusionment with law and order causes her to manipulate the rules to her own advantage. She and Ravi finish cleaning up the scene and then torch the building and Jason’s car to make sure the police are alerted to the crime.
Pip goes on to fool her family by disposing of evidence while they sleep. She then pleads illness to avoid going on an outing with them. To be fair, Pip’s parents are just as guilty as the police in their tendency to dismiss her concerns and her evidence. Pip can’t trust any of the adults in her life. The only people who come to her aid are teenagers like herself. These have all been the victims of other crimes, and they know how it feels to be silenced and discredited.
In these chapters, Pip takes the opportunity to savor the feeling of triumph over those who tried to suppress her in the past. She watches Max sleeping under the influence of Rohypnol:
‘Yeah,’ Pip whispered, looking down at him. Max Hastings. Her cornerstone. The upturned mirror by which she defined herself, everything he was and everything she wasn’t. ‘It sucks when someone puts something in your drink and then ruins your life, huh?’ (360).
Later, as she lays her trail of breadcrumbs for the police, she says:
Follow the trail, Hawkins. The path of least resistance was right here, he just had to follow it, as he had once followed it to Sal Singh. Pip was making it so easy for him. All he had to do was follow, step into the world she was creating just for him (378).
Despite Pip’s carefully laid plans, the segment ends on a cliffhanger as Hawkins tries to ensnare Pip in a trap. In sacrificing herself, she may very well have to endure yet another miscarriage of justice.
Related Titles
By Holly Jackson
