Everything We Never Said

“The cat-eye makeup that had looked so femme fatale the night before now made me look like I wanted to hold Gotham City for ransom with laughing gas.”

Ella’s allusion to the Joker, Batman’s nemesis, highlights how dependent Ella was on her friend before Hayley’s death. On the first day of their junior year, Ella’s hair was a disaster, and the make-up she practiced felt so exaggerated and comical that she looked like a cartoon villain. Hayley rushed right over to help. This is how their relationship worked: Ella needed to be taken care of, and Hayley took care of her. This description characterizes Ella as somewhat hapless and helpless, as well as full of self-doubt.

“Hayley was gone, and it was all my fault. It was me who’d had the beer. Me who had driven. Me who had killed her.”

Although Ella cannot remember the night of the accident, she has pieced together details from others’ recollections and determined that she is fully responsible for what happened. Her experiences with guilt and shame illuminate The Futility of Guilt, where she incorrectly assumes that the fault is her own even though others are absolutely responsible for what happened.

“Somehow, I need to figure out a way to stay invisible and numb for the next seventy-three thousand minutes.”

Ella’s desire to be “numb” highlights The Importance of Feeling One’s Feelings. She tries to anesthetize herself against the pain and grief she feels for Hayley’s death, as well as the guilt she feels for being so attracted to Sawyer. However, as she learns, the only way to heal is to allow herself to feel everything. Ella’s wish to be “numb” comes from a place of fear, and it characterizes her early on before she learns how capable she is.

“If you knew Ella like I do […] then you’d know that Ella’s always been pocket aces, but that she’d never bet on herself.”

Sawyer uses a metaphor to compare Ella to the best poker hand a player can have in Texas Hold ’em: a pair of aces. Sawyer’s assessment demonstrates Ella’s lack of self-confidence and self-reliance, as well as her fundamental value, in his eyes. Sawyer recognizes how capable and smart she is, and he also sees that she doesn’t recognize this in herself.

“My life’s been kind of a nightmare. Some days I can keep it together. And then some days I stub my toe on a chair, and I get so furious that I wish, like I actually wish, the chair were alive so I could kill it slowly.”

Sawyer’s intense anger and exaggerated emotions—such as actively wanting to murder a chair because he happened to stub his toe on it—make it easier for the reader to assume, with Ella, that Sawyer is the “S” Hayley writes about. The anger that makes him feel so volatile and violent toward a chair could reasonably be assumed to apply to people as well.

“Love isn’t like stepping into a river, where either you’re wet or you’re not. Love is the river itself. Sometimes the current is tranquil and steady […] And sometimes […] it has sharp rocks and bruising rapids. The sudden drops and turns are confusing and painful, but it’s still the same river. It’s still love.”

Ella’s grandmother compares love to a river, metaphorically. Sometimes, the river, like love, is calm and easy. Sometimes, the river—and the love it represents—is difficult and full of unexpected threats and dangers. Ella writes about Phoebe’s love for Hayley in this manner, struggling to understand how abuse and guilt are disguised as love.

“Now all of Phoebe’s legacies end with her.”

This line emphasizes The Cyclical Nature of Abuse. Ella believes that Phoebe’s legacy of abuse cannot be perpetuated in Hayley anymore because Hayley died. Ella’s claim underscores the pain and suffering that Hayley endured due to her mother’s treatment of her and how that propensity for abuse could have been inadvertently passed down to Hayley had she lived.

“Somehow, the silence with Sawyer is expansive, freeing. So unlike the claustrophobic, tense quiet at home.”

Ella’s experiences with Sawyer can be interpreted as clues that help establish that he is not the abusive “S” of Hayley’s diary. On the other hand, Ella’s early comfort with him—especially in regard to his protectiveness of her—mirrors the early ease of Hayley’s relationship with “S.” Thus, clues like this create ambiguity that sows doubt about “S’s” identity and what Sawyer may be capable of.

“It started out a small fire, just some warming flames in a circle of stones. And now it’s a conflagration, burning up forests and countries and planets. There is no end to it. Nor do I ever want there to be. I already know: This will consume me until there’s nothing left.”

Hayley uses a metaphor to compare her relationship with “S” to a flame, one that starts small and grows into something she inadvertently characterizes as destructive. While she thinks of their passion as powerful and desirable, word choices like “burning up” and “consume” foreshadow the relationship’s damaging nature and suggest the harm that it causes her.

“Technically, Sean just saved my life. Then why do I still feel like it’s in danger?”

Ella’s uncertainty about Sean’s character and her fears about the threat he poses raise the possibility that Hayley’s “S” could be Sean. He leers at Ella in a predatory way, and she knows that he cheated on Phoebe with a much younger woman. Ella’s intuition tells her that Sean is dangerous, creating more mystery about who “S” is.

“[S]uddenly, something in my brain shifts, splitting open. I’m here, but I’m not, because it’s four months ago, and I’m in my car, Hayley beside me […] The road curves left. I turn the wheel left. But the car goes right.”

Ella cannot remember the events leading up to the accident, and Harlow uses flashbacks to develop the mystery as Ella slowly recalls more. Her recollection that the car moved the opposite way from the direction she steered is a clue that someone else was involved in the accident—another car hit hers, forcing it to move in an unexpected direction. These hints about the accident add mystery and suspense to the story.

“When Sawyer pulls back and kicks the gear into drive, I’m trembling, wondering, for a moment, where the real danger is: outside, or right here, in this car.”

Lines like this encourage the reader to believe that either Sawyer or Sean is Hayley’s “S.” Ella’s sense of danger and the fact that she feels unsafe with both distract her and the reader from realizing the danger posed by Mr. Wilkens.

“But you’d hate me if you knew.”

When Sawyer narrates, he reveals that he is keeping a big secret from Ella, something that he feels would cause her to be very angry and resentful of him. Though he never expresses guilt for or acknowledges the abusive way that “S” treats Hayley, this kind of thinking casts doubt on his innocence.

“Hayley wasn’t herself in the months leading up to the accident. She’d been erratic and mercurial […] I had chalked it up to fights with Phoebe, the instability of her home life, the stress of track…but maybe there was something more. Looking back, I can see it now, how she started to pull away from Sawyer.”

Ella’s recollections about the last few months of Hayley’s life contribute to her sense that something was off between Hayley and Sawyer and that Ella didn’t know everything that was troubling Hayley. This makes Ella question how good a friend she was to Hayley, leading to feelings of guilt and shame that she tries to hide from others in her life. This attempt to hide her feelings isolates her and makes her easier prey for Sam Wilkens.

“What even is love, right? It can mean different things, and…I mean, I’m sure Phoebe loved my father once. Sure, it got ugly and raw […] Why else would there be those lines, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse?”

Hayley tries to justify “S’s” changeable and capricious behavior by rationalizing the language of some wedding vows. If “love” were only comprised of easy and happy times, there’d be no need to promise to keep one another during the “worse” times. She assumes that the version of good and bad that she’s experiencing in her relationship is within the bounds of what is normal, healthy, and expected. This is the kind of thinking that can contribute to The Cyclical Nature of Abuse. Hayley hasn’t observed a healthy relationship, so she doesn’t know what it ought to look or feel like.

“That hadn’t been anger, but mutual desire pushed past the point of pain. That had been a dam breaking, and I’d done everything I could to shatter that wall between us.”

Just as Hayley rationalizes “S’s” behavior, Ella seems to rationalize Sawyer’s. She tries to disregard his anger, choosing to recognize only the passion they share. This makes it seem like she’s going to fall victim to the same assumptions that Hayley made. Ironically, she does, as she also fails to recognize the way that Sam’s behavior crosses boundaries.

“With each word, I bring my fist down onto the kitchen table. Pens, lipstick, and Advil bottles go flying with each slam. On the last word, there’s a terrible cracking sound, and the table sags on one side […] Something ugly and bitter howls through me.”

Sawyer’s uncontrollable anger after learning that his mother was passed over for a job because she lacks a college degree demonstrates the way that The Cyclical Nature of Abuse can create patterns that lead to more abuse. His physical aggression reflects the “ugly and bitter” feelings that overwhelm Sawyer in moments like these. Episodes like this seem to support Ella’s assumption that “S” is Sawyer.

“Hayley was so worldly. Wise in a way no seventeen-year-old should be. I felt like a tadpole, and she was one of those gorgeous Amazon rainforest frogs whose stunning colors showed you how brilliant and deadly they were. She always had the answers, and she always assured me that no matter how naïve I was, she’d take care of me.”

Ella’s simile, in which she is like a tadpole, and her metaphor, in which Hayley is a brightly colored poisonous frog, make it clear how helpless she feels compared to her best friend. While Hayley strikes her as powerful and capable of handling any difficulty, Ella feels relatively defenseless. Hayley’s efforts to protect Ella’s innocence do nothing to render Ella more capable or to avail Hayley of the help that she, herself, needs.

“Something hot flares in his expression before his face shutters tight. I’m becoming increasingly aware of how the only sound I hear is Sawyer’s feet crunching dry straw as he paces irritably. There’s no light beyond the half-moon above. Not a sound of another soul.”

In the corn maze, Ella’s description emphasizes her fear and darkens the text’s mood. The silence, broken only by Sawyer’s “irritabl[e]” pacing; the darkness, mitigated only by a “half-moon”; and Sawyer’s flare of anger, and his subsequent attempt to hide it, create an ominous feeling. These descriptions also reinforce that Sawyer is hiding things from Ella and could be capable of the violence that she fears.

“He’s a good person working through difficult things that make him act in ways he doesn’t want to or mean. So why am I scared? All the time? And why, lately, do I feel a sense of foreboding so potent I’m constantly nauseous?”

Hayley tries to rationalize “S’s” abusive behavior and gaslighting, mirroring Ella’s attempts to justify Sawyer’s behavior. The ominous mood created by Hayley’s description of “S” matches the threatening atmosphere created by Ella’s words in the corn maze. Further, Hayley’s nausea foreshadows her pregnancy.

“I know he’s just being a good school psychologist […] But that doesn’t stop his words from meaning something to me, from lighting my bones from within like golden sparks.”

Sam makes Ella feel special, just like he did with Hayley, though Ella hasn’t yet realized how dangerous he is. Her claim that his words make her feel full of “golden sparks” emphasizes his ability to deceive as well as the inappropriateness of his contact with students.

“I can’t seem to stop blinking, a malfunctioning machine. I’m a page that won’t reload, a spinning circle. I need someone to reset me. Shut me down. Unplug, replug.”

Ella uses metaphors to characterize her confusion and difficulty processing the information that reveals Mr. Wilkens to be the “S” of Hayley’s diary. She compares herself to a machine that no longer works or to a webpage that won’t load because she feels like her brain isn’t working properly. She thought that “S” referred to Sawyer for so long that the new information regarding Sam renders her temporarily incapable of making sense of things.

“I used to wrap my contempt for Phoebe around me like armor. I swore I’d never be like her, breaking her body and her heart over and over, just for any hope that someone might keep her for longer than a day. I vowed to myself I would never be so dumb. So weak […] But this was all fear disguised as armor, a recipe for shame.”

Hayley’s description emphasizes The Cyclical Nature of Abuse and The Importance of Feeling One’s Feelings; her refusal to deal with her difficult feelings regarding Phoebe made it likely that she would be subjected to future abuse. Hayley uses a simile to compare her disrespect of Phoebe to personal armor. In believing herself to be utterly unlike her mother and in judging women like Phoebe, Hayley avoids dealing with her more difficult feelings of fear and, ultimately, shame.