53 pages • 1 hour read
Ned VizziniBe More Chill
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
In the morning, before school, Jeremy does what he calls an Appearance Check on himself in the mirror. He focuses on his physical features as unattractive. He mentions that his hair has dandruff, which used to be a source of fun for him and Michael when they would compete to see who had more of it but now causes him to feel shame and disgust with himself. He considers getting plastic surgery to change his appearance. His father enters the bathroom while Jeremy is looking in the mirror. Jeremy is embarrassed by his father’s shameless nudity and his overweight body. When his mother opens the door to check on them, he looks at the wrinkles in her face that are not yet hidden by makeup. Jeremy’s dislike of his own appearance transfers onto his parents, and he decides that they look like “an example of people who shouldn’t breed and what their offspring would be” (40).
Chapter 10 Summary
Jeremy walks to school. He explains that at Middle Borough High School, any person in a class above freshman is cool only if they have a car or get a ride with a person who has a car. Poor students ride the bus, and “dorky” students ride to school with their parents. Because Jeremy walks, he does not fit into any of these categories. When Jeremy gets to math class, he looks at Christine apologetically, but she does not see him. He overhears Jenna and Anne talking about Elizabeth’s sex life again and fantasizes about telling them to stop talking. However, when Jenna notices him, she tells Anne that Jeremy is a stalker who tracks what people say about him on sheets. Jeremy panics as he realizes that Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets; because popular people are like an insect hive mind, the gossip will soon spread to the whole school
Chapter 11 Summary
Jeremy sits beside Michael in the hallway after class. They watch as the three hottest girls in school—Katrina, Stephanie, and Chloe—walk past them. Jeremy fixates on his posture and physical awkwardness as he watches them. Michael encourages him to try asking one of them to the Halloween dance. Jeremy worries about his inability to dance and considers whether he ought to attend. However, when Christine comes out of the classroom and passes by, Jeremy looks at her legs and finds them even more beautiful than Katrina’s, Stephanie’s, or Chloe’s. He tells Michael that he will go to the dance, even though Michael is not, and asks him for a ride to the costume store after school. Michael asks if he is planning to bring a date to the dance. Jeremy says no, but he is still watching Christine as she walks away.
Chapter 12 Summary
At rehearsal, Jeremy sits next to Christine again. Their physical proximity makes him imagine how close they are to touching. While reading lines, Jeremy tries to think of an interesting comment to make that would start another conversation with her. He tells her the fact that Michael mentioned over the phone about how humanity stopped evolving due to a lack of selective breeding. She thinks it is strange, and they are both distracted by reading their lines, but she smiles and offers to talk about it after the rehearsal. After the read through is done, Jeremy and Christine continue to talk about human evolution. She argues that humanity might be getting smarter because successful and rich people are more likely to find partners. Jeremy counters that his dad is successful but not smart. Christine reveals that her father was fired from his job at AOL and now works at a theme park. Jeremy tries to make a pun about this, but she seems offended, particularly when he helps her find a lost item that she dropped, which he doesn’t realize is a feminine hygiene product. He recovers from the awkward moment by asking her if she gets to ride the theme park rides without a line. When Christine sees Jake, she says goodbye, and Jeremy turns away so that he will not have to see the two of them being physically affectionate.
Chapter 13 Summary
After school, Jeremy finds Michael playing handball outside. The two of them go to buy a Halloween costume. Michael has a learner’s permit but does not get in trouble for driving without an adult because he drives a big, slow Buick. In the car, Michael plays emo music and offers to put on the Weezer album Pinkerton, demonstrating his affiliation with the alternative rock counterculture of the early 2000s. While Jeremy does not like the music, he enjoys car rides because he likes to look out the windows and imagine what other people’s lives are like when he sees their houses. In the car, Jeremy reveals his crush on Christine and his disappointment that she is dating Jake. Michael warns him that the girl his brother dated always stole his shirts, prompting Jeremy to ask how Michael’s brother was able to get an extremely high score on the SAT. Michael claims that his brother took an experimental pill with a computer inside it. The device is called a “script” because it talks inside of a person’s head. Jeremy forgets about the script when they arrive at the costume store. He buys a scary movie mask that obscures his whole face and fantasizes about pulling the mask off to kiss Christine. Michael laughs at him for buying such a stupid mask.
Chapter 14 Summary
In the coming weeks, Jeremy and Christine continue to have short conversations after rehearsals. Because Christine and Jake never sit next to each other during play practice, Jeremy is still not sure whether they are romantically involved or just friends. He dislikes platonic relationships between men and women because of the blurry line between friendly affection and sexual attraction.
Christine explains that she developed a social code that ranks the stages of a relationship. She classifies the types of romantic relationships as Hooking Up, Dating, Going Out, and Boyfriend-Girlfriend and outlines the expectations that are associated with each stage. Jeremy makes a joke that there is a fifth stage, Ex Boyfriend-Girlfriend, which causes her to playfully hit him on the arm. Jake arrives, and Christine leaves with him. She kisses Jeremy on the cheek, but he watches as Jake puts an arm around her waist, confirming that they are romantically involved.
Chapter 15 Summary
Jeremy tells his parents that he is going to the Halloween dance. His mother is excited, and his father asks if he is taking a girl with large breasts. When he says that he is not, his father asks if he is gay. This upsets his mother, who says it would be fine if he were. Jeremy confirms that he is not gay and asks to book a car service to get to the dance at the Elks Lodge. When he arrives in his mask, he sees that it is crowded because the three “hot girls”—Katrina, Stephanie, and Chloe—are there. As he watches them dancing, he also notices that Christine is dancing with Jake. While Jeremy watches, Rich approaches him and offers him a flask of scotch. When Rich recognizes him, he acts much nicer than usual. After demonstrating his ability to convince any girl at the party to make out with him, Rich offers to show Jeremy how to do the same. He is able to get girls to like him because he has a SQUIP, the real name for the “script” computer pill that Michael mentioned earlier. The SQUIP is new technology from Japan. It speaks to Rich inside his head, telling him what to say to get people to like him. Rich believes that Jeremy is badly in need of a SQUIP and tells him that it will cost $600, but he can get one from a leather trader from Ghana who hangs out at the bowling alley. Jeremy leaves the dance and walks home, causing him to arrive very late at night. His father assumes that he is back late because he was with a girl, and Jeremy does not want to disappoint him by telling him the truth.
Chapters 9-15 Analysis
As Jeremy grows closer to Christine, he continues to struggle with insecurity related to his self-image and the social system of his high school. These chapters continue to introduce new social rules that Jeremy must navigate, such as the ranking of student transportation and Christine’s system for categorizing the stages of a romantic relationship. Michael’s perspective contrasts with Jeremy’s, as he does not seem to worry about his ranking or status. Michael encourages Jeremy to pursue the things that he genuinely wants, rather than doing things that will help him fit in. Music demonstrates Michael’s characterization as authentic and an individual, in contrast to Jeremy’s desire to conform. When Jeremy goes to the Halloween dance, Michael stays home because “he’s listening to the new Weezer album” (63). Michael’s interests form the basis for Jeremy and Christine’s conversations, as Jeremy uses facts that are “often stolen from Michael” to break the ice with her (58). However, rather than being embarrassing, these unique conversation topics facilitate Jeremy’s relationship with Christine, foreshadowing the revelation of authenticity and honesty as a better foundation for a relationship than social performance.
Body insecurity and the awkwardness of adolescence become increasingly troubling to Jeremy during these chapters. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he fixates on his physical flaws: “I have brown hair and brown eyes—good right?—but under a critical light, which is how the world views you, I can see how I might resemble someone with palsy” (38). Alongside Jeremy’s critical evaluation of his own appearance, he worries that his movements are also unattractive. When the “hot girls” walk past him, he is “sitting like a tormented puppet, my wrist twitching and my neck grinding against itself as the legs pass by” (45). These issues with physical awkwardness factor into his reluctance to attend the Halloween dance, as he worries that he will not be good at dancing with a girl.
Despite Jeremy’s insecurity about his body, he still craves physical contact with Christine. When he sits beside her at play rehearsal, he sits close enough that “static electricity pulls our armhairs together” (48), and he imagines sweat forming a microscopic bridge between their bodies. In this circumstance, the functions of his body become pleasant to imagine, rather than humiliating, suggesting that Jeremy’s adolescent body mingles the experiences of shame and sexual pleasure.
By the end of these chapters, Jeremy uncovers the existence of the SQUIP, a piece of technology that could help him achieve the social status he thought would be impossible for him. While this technology initially sounds helpful and desirable, there are some hints that it may be more malevolent. For example, when Rich explains the SQUIP to Jeremy, he claims, “It advised me to be a dick to you for social reasons, but recently it started saying that you were a decent guy actually who might want a SQUIP of your own” (73). Neither Rich nor Jeremy remarks upon this sudden change, but Rich’s dialogue implies that the SQUIP does not abide by ethical standards. The novel implies that if this technology recommended that Rich bully Jeremy for social status, it may promote other unethical behavior. Additionally, the fact that the SQUIP suddenly began recommending that Rich be nice to Jeremy to get him a SQUIP of his own suggests that the SQUIP is programmed to advertise itself to new potential customers. In the same way that advertisements play upon insecurity in order to sell more products, the SQUIP exploits Jeremy’s low social status to attempt to make him buy one of his own.
