Today’s chapter starts out with Damen sitting at the lunch table with her friends, because really, what else did you expect?  A plot?  Oh, you silly dear.  Here, have a cookie, it’ll help with the pain.

“Ever lived in Oregon,” Miles says, placing the candy on the center of his tongue before chasing it down with a swig of Vitamin Water.

“Portland.” Damen nods.

Miles laughs. “Not a question, but okay. What I meant was, our friend Ever here, well, she lived in Oregon,”

I’m honestly surprised it took the book this long to make that joke.

This all sit around and make smalltalk about nothing, and every time Ever and Damen look at each other the book gets all twitterpated over itself.  Then lunch is over, rendering all of that pointless timewasting.

Seriously. Out of all the kids in this school, out of all the cool cliques he could join, why on earth would he choose to sit with us, the three biggest misfits?

Okay, so, I know I don’t like these three, but mostly because they’re irritating stereotypes and also I have to spend time with them instead of with an actual plot.  But why are they the three biggest misfits in school?  We haven’t seen any clue that they’re bullied or outcast, and on the whole, they seem pretty low-key.  They aren’t doing anything that would stand out in a high school, no matter how much the book insists that Haven’s “gothness” is weird.  Miles being gay could get him bullied, especially if he’s flamboyant about it, but we don’t have a hint of that yet.  Could be because we haven’t seen anyone else in the school, outside of general set dressing.  We don’t even know how big the school is.  I don’t know, maybe there’s only a few hundred kids and Haven really is the only goth, but fuck if the book wants to tell me that.  Given the fact that her aunt works in a big metropolis area in SoCal, though, I’m assuming this isn’t some small town school.  In a large group, these three here would be just part of the background noise, not losers.

After Damen leaves, Miles informs Ever that they made plans to meet at her house before she arrived, so they’ll all be showing up at eight.  Oh, joy, and we get to read all about it, don’t we?

Then we get more infodumping as we learn that Haven obsessively attends self-help groups for problems she doesn’t have and she’s just seeking positive reinforcement.  Hello, Fight Club. 

Like with the whole Goth thing. It’s not that she’s really all that into it, which is pretty obvious by the way she always skips instead of skulks, and how her Joy Division posters hang on the pastel pink walls of her not-so-long-ago ballerina phase (that came shortly after her J. Crew catalog preppy phase).

Did you hear that?  You can’t enjoy the aesthetic of “goth look” unless you also sulk and have no other interests.  Get back into your pigeonhole, Haven, how dare you try and be nuanced and complete.  Fitting in more than one category makes you a pathetic wannabe, didn’t you hear?

So, I just spent the last hour on tumblr looking for the post I wanted and couldn’t find it and if anyone sends me a link to it so I can like and reblog it, that’d be awesome.  BUT it was basically the best advice I’ve ever seen.  It encouraged kids to be as many different versions of themselves as possible, because when you’re 14 (ish) is about the only time you can do that.  You’re growing and discovering and settling into your own skin and you’re not the same person from one day to the next so why should you confine yourself to the same stuff?  Why not be a cowgirl one day and a cheerleader the next?  Or both?  It’s okay to experiment and try on different personalities like they’re new jeans, and it’s okay to like one and stop liking it next week because you’re still growing into who you are.  Be 14 different people in 15 days and fucking brag about it, because that’s the whole point of being a teenager.  It was beautiful.

And then you get shit like this book, that mocks teenagers for daring to change trends IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOST CONFUSING, CONSTANTLY CHANGING PERIOD OF YOUR LIFE.

“That’s right, kids, if you don’t know exactly who you are by 16 and stick with it forever, then you’re a fake!  And have you read Hunger Games?  Fake is bad.  It’s just the worstest thing you can ever be.”

Fuck that shit.

I don’t even care if I’m not a teen anymore; I’m going to be an astronaut tomorrow JUST TO SPITE THIS SHITTY BOOK.

Haven’s just learned that the quickest way to stand out in a town full of juicy clad blondes is to dress like the Princess of Darkness.

Seriously, I’ve lived in LA, there’s all sorts there.  In spite of the jokes, not everyone is an assembly line replica of each other and the fastest way to make me role my eyes is to claim that you’re “oh so very different” for not being a stereotype.  Well, congrats on not being an oversimplified joke; I’m sure you’re just the first person ever to actually exist, aren’t you?

Only it’s not really working as well as she hoped. The first time her mom saw her dressed like that, she just sighed, grabbed her keys, and headed off to Pilates.

Maybe because, you know, it’s not really a big deal?

If that’s your only example of Haven’s parents being terrible, then go back to the drawing board and try again.

Ever takes some time out to mope, again, about how she used to be popular.  Now she’s “unseen,” which she knew would happen right after the accident.

I knew it the day Rachel and Brandon visited me in the hospital. They acted so nice and supportive on the outside, while inside, their thoughts told a whole other story. They were freaked by the little plastic bags dripping liquids into my veins, my cuts and bruises, my cast covered limbs. They felt bad for what happened, for all that I’d lost, but as they tried not to gape at the jagged red scar on my forehead, what they really wanted to do was run away.

WHELP there goes any pity I might have ever developed for you, chickadee. 

Really?  You reject your friends and call yourself an outcast because RIGHT AFTER YOUR FATAL ACCIDENT, two other teens were freaked out by what was, probably, their first concrete example of fatal consequences?  (Really, that is about the time that ideas of mortality start to sink in, which is why so many teens are fascinated with suicide and death even if they aren’t necessarily depressed or suicidal.  They’re simply trying to come to terms with a concept that was ungraspable before now.)

Seriously, nothing about that passage indicates that the two friends rejected Ever or even thought she, herself, was a freak.  They just thought hospitals were freaky, as a lot of people do.  Now Ever is waving that shit around like it makes her a martyr, when really, it makes her seem like some selfish asshole crying crocodile tears.  I can’t take anything this girl says seriously now, because for all I know, she could be twisting events around to fit her “pity me” narrative.

If it were done on purpose, that would be pretty awesome, actually.  But I don’t think it is.

And that’s it for this chapter.  Man, nothing happens in these, but the infodumps and idiocy sure give me plenty to riff on anyway, don’t they?