The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 6-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary

The introduction describes Satchel finding a note on her pillow from Kerouac telling her he’s made a mistake. Kerouac also leaves her an amulet, which he tells her to wear at all times.

Mikey, in a great deal of pain in the days after the accident, sneaks out of the house one night to meet Jared in the Field, an outdoor meeting place for their friend group. Jared’s grandmother was a Goddess of cats who came from her world and into the mundane world during a battle between the Gods and the indie kids and fell in love with Jared’s grandfather. This history has left Jared with an affinity for cats and some healing powers. Jared helps with Mikey’s injuries as best he can, and the boys discuss Mikey’s mother’s newfound political path and the fact that Mr. Shurin, Jared’s father, will be running an underdog campaign against her.

Mikey returns home and commiserates with Mel about their mother’s disregard for their feelings about her political aspirations. Mikey goes to bed but wakes in the middle of the night to find his father drunk and sobbing at the edge of his bed and feeling guilty for not having been there when Mikey got hurt.

Chapter 7 Summary

In the introduction, Satchel sees “the single most handsome boy she’s ever seen” in the amulet (85). Later, after kissing Dylan, she reveals to him that the amulet has told her that the Immortals have arrived.

Mikey, feeling better after Jared’s healing but still injured, takes the day off from school. He reflects on his intense friendship and prior sexual experimentation with Jared and how this made him question his sexuality when he was younger. Ultimately, though, he feels a strong attraction to women—especially Henna.

Mikey then visits his grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, in a nursing home. After, he goes to the site of his crashed car to retrieve his phone from the wreckage. While he’s in the ruined car, Mikey notices that the deer’s corpse has started to move. Mikey removes himself from the car and watches the deer, with its body shattered and eyes glowing blue, leap past him and into the forest.

Chapter 8 Summary

In the introduction, Satchel, Dylan, and another (living) indie kid named Finn research the Immortals. Meanwhile, the Court of the Immortals needs to find Vessels so that they can live for extended periods in this world. They find Satchel’s police officer uncle and decapitate him.

Mikey and Mel take Meredith out for mini golf. On the ride over, Meredith reveals that she used a credit card their mother got her for emergencies to purchase three Bolts of Fire tickets. Henna, Jared, Nathan, and Steve—whom Mel is now dating—join the siblings for golf; no one in town is traveling alone anymore after the revelation that there are zombie deer. Mikey notices that the near-death experience seems to have changed Henna—she says that the crash “made a whole bunch of things clearer” (104). Mikey has a conversation with Nathan, who acknowledges Mikey’s animosity and explains that before he moved, he was also an indie kid and lost his sister to vampires; this is why he bonded so strongly with Henna, who lost her brother, Teemu, to a vampire incursion a few years back. Mikey’s loathing of Nathan begins to soften. After, Henna tells Mikey that she wants to meet up with Nathan after they get their prom photos taken and spend some time alone with him.

Chapter 9 Summary

In the introduction, Satchel goes to the police station to look for her uncle but finds that he, along with the other officers, all have a peculiar blue glow in their eyes. Satchel’s uncle threatens her, and she flees home, where she finds the second Finn. They almost kiss, but Satchel touches her amulet and sees the handsome boy inside.

After getting Mikey’s prom photos done, Mikey and Jared stop by Jared’s house. Jared’s dad recommends that they party in his lake cabin after prom, an idea Mikey likes. Mikey goes to the bathroom to wash off the makeup covering his injuries and gets stuck in a compulsive washing loop. Jared comes in to help him break out of it, and they begin to discuss Mikey’s insecurities about leaving for college and his worry that Jared is keeping something from him because Jared goes out alone on Saturday nights.

After, Mikey meets up with Henna, who surprises him by being forward and asking if she can kiss him. Henna explains that she wants to be more proactive in life, to explore all possible options, and that she’s been attracted to Mikey in the past. While they’re kissing in the car, a police officer knocks on the window. The officer, in sunglasses, criticizes them for their “impudence” and tells them that they’re not safe. As Mikey begins to ready the car to start driving again, he hears a voice telling him to “look closer.” The officer takes off his glasses, and his eyes glow blue. He points a gun at Mikey but lowers it, telling the kids that they’re not the ones he’s looking for. Mikey and Henna race off into the night.

Chapters 6-9 Analysis

In addition to satirizing contemporary YA fiction, Satchel’s plotline also serves as a narrative juxtaposition for Mikey’s. Satchel has seemingly endless agency, while Mikey feels he has none; Satchel makes sense of the mysteries plaguing the town while Mikey can’t; and—crucially—Satchel has an idealized home life, while Mikey’s is anything but ideal. When Satchel writes a poem, her parents “give her loving space to just feel what she needs to” (11), and when her friends die, Satchel’s parents “hug her and give her space to grieve” (98). This repetition of the notion that her parents support her, yet give her space, points to some of the reasons why Mikey can’t seem to form healthy bonds with his parents.

Thematically, this contributes to Choosing One’s Family: Mikey doesn’t see his parents as being part of his true family. This section of the novel does significant work in showing why this is the case. Mikey’s father doesn’t get as much time on the page as his mother does, but the few scenes in which he appears paint a portrait of a man who regrets the mistakes he made early in life and has been hollowed by alcohol addiction. In Chapter the Sixth, Mikey’s father comes into Mikey’s room in the middle of the night, after Mikey’s car accident, and apologizes for not being present enough in his life. This interaction—which ends with his father drunkenly falling asleep on Mikey’s bed and Mikey dragging his own injured body to go sleep on the couch—demonstrates the inverted power dynamics that characterize his relationship with his father. Not only is Mikey’s father unable to provide emotional support for his children, but he depends on his children for this very support. The scene in Mikey’s bedroom is a literal representation of how this impacts Mikey: His father takes up the spaces in Mikey’s life that should be his own, pushing him out and forcing him to forge his own place inside (or outside) of the household.

This section of the novel also introduces Mikey’s relationship with his grandmother, who lives in a nursing home and has Alzheimer’s disease. Mikey’s description of his grandmother’s condition is one of the few moments where his narration becomes irate: “Alzheimer’s in movies really pisses me off. You know, where Grandma is sweet and funny and says hilarious-but-wise things […] Alzheimer’s is nothing like that. […] It’s terrifying and annoying and so sad you want to kill yourself” (91). Mikey’s framing of “real” versus “in movies” underscores the novel’s goal of rejecting the artificiality of narratives that sanitize real, difficult issues that modern teens face. Ness doesn’t use Mikey’s grandmother or her Alzheimer’s as a plot device; her presence in the novel serves virtually no plot purpose. Instead, Mikey’s relationship with his grandmother adds texture to his characterization, and the conclusion to this scene, in which Mikey has to call the nurse because his grandmother has gone from screaming to crying, highlights the theme of Coping with an Uncertain Future through the very real personal challenges Mikey faces that don’t have easy solutions.