Unfriended

Hazel is Truly’s best friend, but the designation doesn’t last long. By the end of Chapter 1, Truly leaves Hazel for Natasha and the popular crowd. The loss of Truly turns Hazel into Truly’s antagonist. Hazel becomes an agent of chaos, and the turmoil that besets the popular crowd starts with her. She sends Natasha’s email to Brooke, which gets Natasha kicked out of the popular group. As a result, Natasha starts to scheme against Truly, thinking Truly, not Hazel, sent the email.

As a manipulator, Hazel excels. She boasts, “My perfect revenge fantasy was coming true: Truly, wandering the halls alone.” At the same time, Hazel isn’t “a world dominator type bad-guy” (316). Hazel isn’t evil, and the sight of the isolated Truly fills her with compassion. Hazel admits that she wants to comfort Truly, but she doesn’t because she fears Truly will reject her again. Once Truly cuts school, Hazel becomes worried. Reinforcing her caring feelings for Truly, Hazel sends Truly a cascade of texts and eventually confesses her role in the drama. Hazel, too, is like her name: She’s a bit of a haze. She can be deceptive and honest. Her character indicates that people often have good and bad qualities, and the latter shouldn’t automatically compromise the former.

Unlike Truly, Hazel doesn’t seem drawn to the popular crowd. She doesn’t antagonize Truly because she’s jealous of Truly’s new influential position. She schemes against her because she wants Truly to stay her friend. With green hair and a “moody” and “awkward” look, Hazel comes across as independent. She describes the students as “zombie automatons,” indicating that nearly everyone, popular or not popular, is less than her. What makes Hazel superior are her innate traits. As Brooke says, “I’m not confident like Hazel, flying my freak flag without caring what anybody else thinks” (220). Hazel is comfortable with herself, and that makes her admirable.

Natasha is an antagonist, and she sticks to the type for most of the story, though her character has multiple layers. Until sixth grade, Natasha and Truly were best friends. Natasha dumped Truly for being “too babyish” and started hanging out with the popular crowd. Natasha sees the popular crowd as a way to increase her influence. Ambitious, Natasha aims to replace Brooke as the most popular girl in school. Unlike Brooke, Lulu, Evangeline, and Truly, Natasha isn’t demonstrably nice. She initially invites Truly because she wants Truly, and all the nonpopular kids by extension, to believe that she dumped Clay. Thus, her reunion with Truly centers on a scheme. Natasha becomes the victim of Hazel’s machinations when Hazel sends Natasha’s condescending email about Truly’s siblings to Brooke, who banishes Natasha. Like Hazel, Natasha excels at manipulation, and she gets the popular girls to believe that Truly is cyberbullying her.

Natasha doesn’t experience a remarkable change. She remains sassy and peevish. In the final chapter, Truly asks Natasha if she’s ok, and Natasha snaps, “No, Truly. You killed me. Hurt me to the core. Get over yourself” (416). Truly clarifies that she was asking about Natasha’s foot. Truly wants to “just try not to be so mad at each other all the time” (417), and Natasha promises to try. Her response provides some hope, but it’s also noncommittal, suggesting that she’s mostly the same person.

Natasha’s main flaw is insecurity. Her parents are divorced, and she feels vulnerable to people leaving. She compares Truly to her stepfather, stating, “She barges in and takes my seat at the table the way my frigging temporary stepfather took my dad’s seat at our kitchen table” (169). Her mother doesn’t supply much solace. She works with Natasha to cyberbully Truly, and she exacerbates Natasha’s lack of self-confidence. Natasha tells her mother, “You make me hate myself” (402). Natasha’s father sexualizes her, and Clay says, “She’s so freaking hot” (38). However, as the struggle with the dress suggests, Natasha isn’t comfortable with her body. Her many insecurities make her a humane, sympathetic antagonist.

According to Hazel, Brooke is the “number one most popular girl in the entire school” (83). Yet she isn’t a scheming “Queen Bee” but the “Queen of Nice.” She’s inclusive and accessible. She agrees to go over to Hazel’s house even though they don’t know each other well. Brooke praises Hazel’s confident individuality, suggesting that her own self-esteem is somewhat low. Brooke is insecure about her family, and she’s timid about expressing her romantic feelings for Clay. Brooke’s father is optimistic, and Clay and Brooke end up kissing the C stairwell, so Brooke’s character has a relatively happy conclusion.

In terms of the popular crowd, Brooke sets the tone by stressing friendliness. At the same time, Brooke, however unintentionally, makes Truly a target for Hazel and Natasha by banishing Natasha due to the email. If Brooke keeps Natasha and speaks to her about why it’s wrong to disparage Truly’s siblings, Natasha has a weaker reason to go after Truly, and then Hazel can’t manipulate Natasha’s banishment. Put another way, Brooke’s central character trait is kindness, but she doesn’t show Natasha much generosity, and her quick dismissal of Natasha dramatically sharpens the conflicts between Natasha, Truly, and Hazel.

Clay and Jack are the two central male members of the popular crowd. Though they’re eighth-grade boys, they represent “positive masculinity.” The term is somewhat polarizing, as it assumes that masculinity is somehow inherently toxic. Nevertheless, Clay and Jack are thoughtful and introspective and on their way to becoming decent men. Clay transforms during the story by rededicating himself to math. Jack transformed in the past when he started to eat healthier.

The boys function as romantic interests. Natasha and Clay were romantic partners until Clay broke up with her. Brooke likes Clay, and the book hints that Clay might like Truly. Jack explicitly likes Truly and buys her a bracelet. As examples of “positive masculinity,” the boys are nice to the girls and don’t pressure them in any way.

Clay and Jack don’t play an active role in the conflicts between the popular girls, creating a problematic gender division where the girls represent emotional drama and the boys link to sober, rational behavior. Natasha tries to explain what’s happening to Clay, and Clay replies, “I don’t know. Don’t care” (205). As the conflict escalates, Brooke wishes she was in a different group for the History Day project—a group with Clay. However, books like William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954) show that boys can be as dramatic and harmful to each other as girls.