It all began with the main character Halley at "Sisterhood Camp", when she got a phone call from her best friend Scarlett at two in the morning. Michael Sherwood, Scarlett's boyfriend, had died in a motorcycle accident. Scarlett was always the strong one, the one who Halley depended on, but now it was the other way arouund. She asked Hally to come home, she needed her. Hally called her mother who was a therapist and asked her to pick her up. Halley says that she and her mother have always had a close relationship, like bestfriends. And most of her mom's books (her mother writes novel about coping witha teenage daughter) are about how good of a relationship they have. But ever since summer started, their relationship was going downhill.
Hally's mother picked her up from the camp the next day. When she got home, she went straight to scarlett's house. Scarlett had streaks of tears coming down her face, she looked like she had been crying all day. Halley then flashed back to a time, earlier in the summer, when she, scarlett, and a girl named Ginny (who was famous for "getting around" with the players on the football team) would hang out everyday. That summer is when Halley started growing up. She had smoked her first cigarette (apparently all the kids where they live do it) and she hung around the pool with boys a lot and drank alcohol.
One of Michael's friends, Macon, was over scarlett's house, passed out on the bed. Apparently he wasn't taking michael's death very well. At the funeral, it was pooring down raining and when they asked him if he wanted a ride, he declined, and it was clear by his face that he had been crying. School started and on the first day of school, Halley had a real conversation with Macon. They have gym together, which she looks forward to everyday, and she's starting to like him.
Quote: "but this was the New Me, someone I was evolving into with every hot and humid long summer day. I learned to smoke cigarettes, drank my first beer, got a deep tan, and double-pierced my ears as I began to drift, almost imperceptibly at first, from my mother" (Dessen 18).
Reaction: This quote really stuck out to me because I can relate to what Halley was saying. I haven't done the things she talks about, but i see it happening around me A LOT with teen girls. When they're "growing up" they start to do things (usually bad) that they think everyone else is doing, like smoking and drinking. And alot of the times, when girls are in their teenage years, they start to become less close with their mothers. Also I thought it was interesting how, within the 1st chapter, the character already reveals that she is evolving and maturing and growing up.
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