50 pages • 1 hour read
Erin Entrada KellyThe First State of Being
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A 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 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
An informational insert explains that in 1999, one of the most widespread fears among developed nations was Y2K. However, when the year 2000 arrived, very little disruption occurred (see Context above).
On August 17, 1999, Michael Rosario, a mixed-race Filipino American boy living in Red Knot, Delaware, turns 12 years old. He is recovering from a summer cold and is worried about the reported Y2K computer bug as well as about his single mother’s financial struggles. He steals canned peaches (which his mother likes) from the local grocery store for his survival stash. He is nearly caught by Billy “Beejee” Gibson—the store manager’s son and a local bully. Beejee accuses another customer, teenager Jamar Prince, of stealing instead, and Jamar rescues Michael from Beejee’s unwanted attention.
Later, when Michael heads home, he encounters Mr. Mosley, the Fox Run apartment complex handyman. Mr. Mosley is a family friend of the Rosarios. He gives Michael $20 for his birthday. They notice an odd-looking teenage boy, who asks Michael and Mr. Mosley the year and then runs off.
Chapter 2 Summary
When Michael gets home, his babysitter Gibby is waiting for him. Gibby’s family also lives at Fox Run, and Michael has a crush on her. Michael mentions Ridge but is distracted by Gibby’s birthday gift.
Chapter 3 Summary
Mr. Mosley joins Gibby and Michael for lunch. Mr. Mosley reports that he saw Ridge again, still behaving strangely. Michael imagines Ridge attacking Gibby.
Chapter 4 Summary
Later that afternoon, Michael and Gibby encounter Ridge. Gibby finds him strange, and Michael grows increasingly nervous.
An informational insert explains that because language, especially casual language, can change over time, slang can be useful for identifying time periods.
Chapter 5 Summary
Michael is very worried about Y2K. To prepare, he has been gathering supplies for himself and his single mother. Ms. Rosario works three jobs to pay the bills and does not have time to worry about Y2K. She used to work only at the Gibsons’ store, but she was fired after having to miss work when Michael was ill. To celebrate Michael’s birthday, Ms. Rosario gives him expensive shoes as a gift. Michael is shocked and guilty at the extravagant expense but loves them. Soon after, he sees Ridge outside. He and Gibby investigate.
An informational insert explains that time travelers, or Spatial Teleportation Scientists (STSs), have many theories about time travel and its effects on time and space. However, nothing can be known for certain until time travel is actually attempted. One of the most important tenets of time travel is not revealing information about the future to denizens of the past.
Chapter 6 Summary
Michael and Gibby interrogate Ridge, who nearly reveals that his mother is an STS at a future university campus located where Fox Run currently stands. Ridge asks for directions to the mall and reluctantly confesses that he is a time traveler.
An informational insert explains that time travel devices, developed by Ridge’s mother, Dr. Maria Sabio, PhD, have two components: the Spatial Teleportation Module (STM), the machine that sends people back in time; and the EGG, which initiates time travel.
Chapter 7 Summary
Gibby and Michael don’t believe Ridge’s confession that he is a time traveler. He tries unsuccessfully to explain the STM, realizing that he is the first ever time traveler. He takes out his sumbook; it looks like a book but is future technology. Michael is interested. Ridge tells them about a future earthquake in Turkey. He feels comfortable telling them about this future event—in violation of the rules of time-travel—because there is nothing they can do to prevent or influence it.
In a flash forward to August 17, 2199, Ridge Sabio and his siblings study their sumbooks, while their mother (Dr. Maria Sabio) has an important meeting. They bicker about time travel. When the others are distracted, Ridge calibrates the STM. By the time they realize, it is too late. Ridge travels to August 17, 1999. They attempt—and fail—to contact their mother.
Chapter 8 Summary
Michael was bullied in sixth grade. He and his mother have moved for a fresh start. Though the Rosarios have a good relationship with Gibby, they do not get along with her family. Now, Michael fixates on Turkey. His mother grows increasingly concerned about his agitation. Ridge imagines the earthquake and cries.
Chapter 9 Summary
Michael and his mom go to bed, but Michael can’t stop thinking about the earthquake. Later, Gibby calls to say that the earthquake has happened. Michael is devastated and frightened, and Gibby comforts him, but Michael resents being treated like a child.
In a flash forward to January 2199, the NPR Doubletalk Globalcast program features a panel of expert scientists discussing time travel and the newly completed STM. Dr. Maria Sabio supports responsible time travel. Her colleagues disagree. One colleague believes that humans are flawed, so human time travel is unethical—only artificial intelligence (AI) can be a true objective observer; another colleague is concerned about pathogens that denizens of 2199 are not inoculated for; still another questions the need for research into this field at all.
Chapters 1-9 Analysis
The first section of the novel establishes the setting and the major characters. The story takes place in 1999, and the looming turn of the millennium serves as a metaphor for all of protagonist Michael’s anxieties about the future. Michael’s mother recently lost her job without warning, upending their lives and forcing her to work much harder than before to make ends meet, and Michael—a smart, sensitive, self-critical boy of 12, finds himself shaken by the realization that he has limited control over what happens in his life and the lives of his loved ones. Throughout the novel, Michael struggles to learn The Importance of Living in the Present, as his obsessive need to predict and control the future only heightens his anxiety.
A potent symbol of this anxiety is the purported Y2K computer bug. Since their beginnings in the mid-to-late 20th century, computers used two-digit codes to signify the year, and many people therefore worried that the world’s computers would interpret the year 2000 as the year 1900, causing widespread chaos. While grounded in a legitimate and practical concern, media reports about this issue sometimes inflated the potential danger to apocalyptic proportions. Michael—not yet a sophisticated consumer of information—has absorbed these nightmare scenarios and concluded that he must take responsibility for his mother’s safety in the coming apocalypse. The book opens with Michael’s deeply empathetic concern with his mother’s post-apocalyptic comfort:
Peaches, Michael Rosario thought, that’s what we need.
His mother loved peaches.
If the world came to a standstill on January 1, 2000, at least she would have two things she cherished: peaches and Michael (1).
Throughout the book, Michael constantly thinks about what supplies he and his mother will need to survive in the aftermath of the Y2K disaster. As he does so, he always puts his mother’s wants and needs ahead of his own. In this way, the Y2K stash becomes a form of fantasy play in which he imagines that he is his mother’s caretaker rather than the other way around.
Michael’s need to take care of his mother stems from his anxiety about another, more personal milestone. Michael has just turned 12, and just as the world is transitioning from one millennium to another, Michael is transitioning from childhood to adolescence. He believes that since he is no longer a child, he must now care for others rather than letting them care for him. When his mother gives him new shoes for his birthday, he calculates how much the shoes are worth in Y2K supplies rather than simply appreciating the gift. When Ridge appears on the scene—a strange boy claiming to have come from the future—Michael worries that he may attack Gibby, his babysitter, and considers how he might protect her even though it is in fact her job to protect him. Though Michael is coming of age, he has not yet understood The Mutual Nature of Caregiving among adults: He doesn’t realize that he can care for others while allowing them to care for him as well.
As Michael gets to know Ridge, he becomes obsessed with Ridge’s sumbook as a key to all the mysteries that torment him. To Ridge, the sumbook is just a school history textbook, but to Michael it represents exactly the impossible gift he has been longing for: reliable knowledge of the future. He quickly learns, however, that knowing what is going to happen does not necessarily alleviate anxiety. To prove that he is from the future, Ridge tells Michael and Gibby about the devastating İzmit earthquake before it happens. When the earthquake does occur, Michael’s grief for the 20,000 people who die in the disaster is compounded by guilt, as he believes he should have done something to warn the victims. As Michael struggles to protect the people he loves from an unpredictable world, he learns about The Relationship Between Guilt and Grief. When disaster does strike—when his mother loses her job, when an earthquake occurs in Turkey, when Mr. Mosley dies unexpectedly—his grief is made worse by the belief that he could have prevented it.
The final major theme directly introduced in this section is that of The Power and Responsibility of Knowledge. As a time traveler from the future, Ridge has exactly the kind of knowledge Michael craves, but he must be careful what he reveals. Ridge is an adolescent like Michael, and he is the first ever time traveler, and for these reasons he is only beginning to be aware of the burden his knowledge puts on him. While he has studied for this journey, he remains unprepared—instead of blending in, he is immediately clocked as an outsider because of his odd clothes and awkward attempts at 1990s slang (9); his only proof to support his claim of time traveling is his knowledge, but sharing this knowledge may destroy the future from which he comes. Even when he shares a seemingly harmless piece of future knowledge—the Turkey earthquake, which Michael and Gibby are powerless to affect—he inadvertently causes Michael significant emotional distress, as the realization of his powerlessness only feeds his guilt and exacerbates his anxiety.
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By Erin Entrada Kelly
