48 pages • 1 hour read
Ally CarterI'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A 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 19-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
In town, Josh presents Cammie with a corsage before driving her to the town’s fall harvest dance. Intrigued, Cammie follows him inside, where she quickly realizes her etiquette lessons have not prepared her for small-town celebrations. Before she can worry too much, Josh’s parents rush toward them. His mom catches Cammie in a hug, something “the Gallagher Academy had totally not prepared me for” (199). After a bunch more hugs, some awkward questions, and a lot of talk from Josh’s dad about how Josh will inherit the family pharmacy, Josh manages to pull Cammie away from his parents.
Rather than go chat with his friends, Josh brings Cammie out onto the dance floor. He doesn’t really seem to like the other kids or the idea of inheriting the pharmacy, and Cammie wonders if maybe she might “not be the only one in deep cover” (203). As they dance, Cammie notices her mom dancing with Mr. Solomon, and she heads for a shadowy corner of the room, feeling like the world has been pulled out from under her. Josh goes to get drinks, and Cammie is lifted into the rafters.
Chapter 20 Summary
Bex attached a cable to pull Cammie up onto a hay bale suspended above the dance floor. Macey and Liz are there too, and the girls watch Mr. Solomon and Cammie’s mom dancing, looking like a couple. After Cammie left, Macey saw Mr. Solomon and Cammie’s mom get together and agree to go somewhere. The girls slipped a tracker in Cammie’s mom’s purse and activated the tracker planted in Josh’s shoe, which showed the two groups converging. They came to extract Cammie, and hearing all this, Cammie buries her head in the hay, “willing it all to be a dream” (207).
The girls drag a protesting Cammie outside, where Macey sprints for the woods and then drives up in a Gallagher Academy golf cart. Despite all the reasons it’s a terrible idea to stay, Cammie doesn’t go with them, choosing to go back to Josh and the party. After her friends leave, she contemplates how to extract Josh when the pretty girl from the diner shows up. She asks why Cammie’s outside, to which Cammie says she has a headache. The girl offers to send Josh out to take her home, and Cammie realizes that this non-spy could do things a spy could not.
Josh drives them back to the town square, where he gives her a birthday present because it’s the day Cammie said was her birthday as part of her cover. The gift is a delicate pair of silver earrings, and as Josh hugs her, Cammie gets stuck thinking that she’s so lucky to have someone who thinks about her. She feels like she’s looking at herself from the outside, seeing a girl who’s having an amazing moment and wondering if that girl knows “these moments always end” (215).
Chapters 19-20 Analysis
In Chapter 20, Cammie realizes for the first time how similar she and Josh actually are. Up until now, she’s thought their lives are so different, but like her, Josh has pressures and people telling him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Josh struggles with not wanting to inherit the family business as much as Cammie grapples with the idea of giving up the spy life for one with a normal boy and family. Seeing her mom with Mr. Solomon and later hearing her mom cry make Cammie realize she isn’t alone. Her mom also yearns for things to be different and also steals moments to get away from the pressure of the spy life to just feel like a “normal” person.
The end of Chapter 20 sums up the conflict of choosing worlds. The pretty girl from the diner showing up late to the dance shows that, despite her looks, she isn’t confident in herself. She came late to make sure people would be busy when she got there and maybe to avoid having to spend too much time at the party. She and Cammie are both types of chameleons, and the girl, like Cammie and Josh, is under cover and trying to stay unassuming. The earrings Josh gives Cammie symbolize Cammie’s choice of worlds and how she has to pick one. She can’t live in a world where a boy like Josh gives her earrings and a world where jewelry, like the communication necklace she wears, has a purpose other than looking pretty.
