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Randy RibayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Through Mia’s translation, Jay learns Reyna’s backstory, how she came to live with Jun for nearly two years. Reyna grew up in poverty outside Manila. Her family, desperate for money, sold her into a relationship with a stranger who abused her until finally she left him and sought the protection of the human rights organization where Jay’s aunts work. Then Reyna got to know Jun. Their relationship was an abiding friendship, nothing sexual. Reyna responded to Jun’s kindness. Eager to stand on her own, Reyna took the apartment in the seedy Manila neighborhood, and Jun left with her. The two lived together in poverty for two years. By then Jun had fallen in love with Reyna. The two never had sex (the child living with Reyna is an orphan she took in). Reyna insists that Jun never used or sold drugs in their time together, that he volunteered at street clinics to help addicts. Reyna claims that a year earlier, for no apparent reason, Jun suddenly left.
Jay returns to his aunts’ home more confused than ever. Solving the mystery of Jun’s death confounds him, like when “you’re almost finished with a jigsaw puzzle but discover you’re missing a couple of pieces” (217). The aunts take Jay to Katungkulan Beach, a luxurious resort on the South China Sea about an hour from Manila. Immersed in the rolling blue water, Jay feels a kinship with his native country. He realizes, however, that he “cannot claim this country’s serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history” (227).
Returning to his aunts’ home, Jay checks his email and then peruses Facebook until he comes across Grace’s account. He is surprised when Grace accepts his follow request. He scrolls through photos of Jun and reads Grace’s posts that voice uncompromising stands against the Duterte regime. Jay realizes that the anonymous post that initially summoned him to Manila must have come from Grace. She acknowledges as much, messaging him, “I wanted to see if you cared” (238). Grace tells Jay that Jun left Reyna because he was involved in antigovernment activities through a website he helped start and that he feared for Reyna’s safety. Jay scrolls through the news accounts Grace has posted that document the Duterte government’s extrajudicial atrocities. He feels overwhelmed, embarrassed that far away in Michigan he never worried about his native country, never cared to.
It is time for Jay to move on to stay with his grandparents, Lola and Lolo, and to visit his Uncle Danilo, a Catholic priest. Uncle Maning’s family, including Grace, arrives to drive Jay to Legazpi, an isolated rural town set amid the lush jungles of southern Luzon, about seven hours from Manila. After arriving and sharing a traditional Filipino family meal, Jay sees a folded paper sticking out of Grace’s backpack, which he recognizes as one of Jun’s letters. It was Grace, not his uncle, who stole the letters. Setting aside his anger for a moment, Jay reads the letter—a hilarious account of Jun’s decision to be vegetarian despite his family’s fondness for richly seasoned meats. Jay is interrupted by Grace, who confesses that she took the letters. Devastated by her brother’s death and by her family’s refusal to hold any memorial service, Grace saw the letters as a way to connect with her brother. As Grace opens up to Jay, the two share a good cry, and Jay feels closer to her than he did before. She becomes “a new sister instead of a cousin” (265). Emboldened, Jay leaves a teary Grace and decides to confront his uncle about the list Jay found in his desk. When Maning refuses to confirm his involvement in Jun’s death, Jay explodes and tells a shocked family his theory that Maning had Jun killed by operatives from his own police division. He gets an unexpected response. In an unguarded moment of anger, Maning grabs Jay by the throat and nearly chokes him. He says defiantly, “I did not kill Jun, and I did not order anyone to kill Jun” (272).
Shaken by the confrontation, Jay leaves the house. He walks to nearby Legazpi to talk with his Uncle Danilo, the priest. Grace goes with him. The two meet Danilo in the cathedral. Jay shares his suspicions about Maning. Danilo says that Jun’s death was a tragedy, “but there’s nothing more to say” (278). In fact, a few months before Jun’s death, Maning sought Danilo’s help to try to rescue Jun from his addiction. The last time Danilo saw Jun, the effects of his addiction were evident—the boy had lost weight, his face was shallow, his eyes sunken, his nerves palsied. Against Jay’s vehement rejection of the reality of Jun’s drug use, Danilo affirms that Jun was an addict and, driven by his need, he also sold the potent street drug. Jay still resists, convinced that “Jun wouldn’t live that life in a million years” (282). Danilo says no one will ever know who actually killed Jun, but his death was part of a desperate national effort to curb the plague of drug addiction. Jun was mostly likely killed by some nameless government-paid vigilante. He dispassionately observes that “Jun’s death meant one less drug pusher on the streets” (283). Jay is devastated. He expected the truth to illuminate, “[n]ot to ruin” (288). Leaving the church, he and Grace share a long conversation about Jun. As they commiserate, they both realize that they will never be entirely without Jun in their hearts.
With the help of their grandparents and Jun’s mother, who defies her husband, Grace and Jay arrange an impromptu family memorial service for Jun. The family, all but Maning, gather in the backyard and share recollections of Jun. Jay shares a letter he should have written to Jun long ago. In the letter Jay reveals what he has learned—that that no one is simply one thing or another, and that each person has the ability to both hurt and heal others. As Jay finishes the letter, he sees Maning standing apart, alone. Wordlessly, Maning joins his family circle in a final prayer.
It is time for Jay to return to Michigan. He returns to his aunts’ home, where Mia unexpectedly shows up. As Jay shares what he learned about Jun, Mia says her professor suggested that Jun’s story should be published. Jay is interested in writing it with Mia. As he holds her hand, he asks whether there might be something between them. Mia demurs, noting that Jay lives on the other side of the world. They hug and say their goodbyes. On the flight back to Michigan, Jay reads one of Jun’s letters that talks about the plethora of saints in the Catholic Church. If he could be saint, Jun half-jokes, he would be the patron saint of nothing.
During the early morning drive home from the airport, Jay shares his journey with his father. Jay asks his father’s permission to hold off going to college in the fall to take a gap year. He wants to return to the Philippines and work for his aunts’ human rights organization. His father sees how much Jay has grown in just two weeks and, although he suspects a girl might have something to do with Jay’s request, he agrees to talk about the plan. Feeling energized, Jay reflects, “I have the power to change. […] We are not doomed to suffer things as they are, silent and alone. We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen” (312).
As he departs his conversation with his uncle, the priest, Jay desperately exclaims, “All the adults are failing us” (284). This dramatic remark reveals Jay’s movement into adulthood himself. He is ready to stand on his own. In these closing chapters Jay completes his education into awareness. First Reyna, then Danilo, and ultimately Jun himself teach Jay that insight and clear sight are not the same thing. If Jay fails as a detective, in embracing the contradictory nature of the world and in embracing his identity as a Filipino, Jay succeeds in becoming what his long afternoons spent playing video games and smoking joints delayed: an adult.
The backstory of Reyna, the uneducated country girl sold into an abusive marriage by her parents, serves two functions in Jay’s education. First, the story of human trafficking and the suffering that the black-market system creates opens Jay’s eyes to problems that go beyond his narrow concern over his cousin and the drug problem. The problems in his country, and Jay begins to think of the Philippines as his country, go deeper than drug addicts and are far more complicated than can be solved in the government’s crackdown on users and pushers. That realization is the epiphany he experiences while bobbing about in the waters off the swanky beach resort where his aunts take him. Second, Reyna’s story introduces Jay to the real-time, real-world operations geared to actually address these problems. He learns about his aunts’ organization and its commitment to helping needy Filipinos, unlike the government program that aims eradicate the poor. Jay learns that indignation is not enough. Sympathy is not enough. Posting inflammatory newspaper articles on Facebook is not enough. Real problems demand real action. In the end, Jay will return to Manila to join his aunts’ campaign.
Jay’s disillusion with the Catholic Church represents another significant element of his education. As a religious institution, the church ought to bring a sense of compassion to the tragedy of Jun’s spiral into drug addiction. It has been the dictum of the church since the teachings of Christ that all people are responsible for the well-being of others, even the poorest and most desperate. Back in Michigan, Jay dutifully attended church with his parents, but it meant no more to him than any other chore.
During his journey, Jay learns that the Catholic Church means much more in Filipino culture. It represents the centuries-long exploitation of the country by foreign occupation. Catholicism is an artificially imposed religion. The sumptuous appointments and gaudy ornamentation of the church—its freshly waxed and marble floor, the elegant vases of flowers on the altar, the polished pews, and the ornate stained-glass windows depicting the Last Supper—stand in stark contrast to the impoverished slums of Manila. And Father Danilo’s message to Jay that Jun’s death was tragic and necessary underscores the church’s inability to confront the real-time issues devastating the country, specifically drug abuse and human rights violations. As Jay talks with his uncle, Father Danilo reveals that helplessness. When it comes to the plague of drug addiction facing the Philippines, Jay learns that the government has a program but no compassion, while the church has compassion but no program. He must find another way if Jun’s death is to mean anything. Jay fears that Jun’s death will be in vain, that all he will have in the end is a feeling of emptiness.
The letter that Jay reads at the impromptu backyard memorial service reveals the depth of his education and the new direction of his life. Amid the tears, the recitation of the Rosary, and the emotional readings of New Testament passages that promise the hope and glory of an afterlife, Jay’s letter is a singular statement of purpose. It is not enough, he admits in the letter, to miss Jun. That empties the boy’s life of meaning. Like the saints of the Catholic Church, Jun can serve as both inspiration and role model. More than a villain, less than a hero, more than a victim, less than a criminal, more than a sinner, less than a saint, Jun offers Jay a radical new insight into the world.
The letter Jay reads hints at his new conviction that his investigation has not led to solutions and answers but to questions, important questions. He acknowledges that the world cannot be simple, that people cannot be just heroes or villains, and that all anybody has is the compassion of others, both family and a network of committed others. As he watches his uncle join the family circle, Jay marvels how the family has formed its “own small sphere of brightness” (301) with the candles lit in Jun’s memory.
That idea of a small sphere of brightness illuminates the novel’s conclusion, specifically Jay’s decision to work for his aunts’ human rights foundation. Ribay does not impose some artificial, hokey happy ending. No one is arrested for Jun’s death. No one is even held accountable. Jay gets no easy closure. He accepts the importance of grief and the logic of sorrow, but he understands that grief and sorrow need to direct him outward, to commit himself to improving on the conditions that made Jun’s addiction inevitable. Jay understands that silence and drift are not answers to the world’s problems. As he observes, “We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen” (318). That newfound faith in the power of communication closes the novel. Jay returns to Michigan changed. His perceptions of the world have broadened, his sense of his family and his identity have deepened. His father sees that and tells Jay, “You sound like you’ve aged a few years since you left” (316). The novel ends with Jay finally doing what he could not do just two weeks earlier, before he left for the Philippines: He talks with his father. Not to his father but with his father, and not as son to father but as man to man, a dynamic underscored by the two sharing coffee, a very adult drink, and greeting a new morning together.