Double Literary Elements

Mystery/Thriller (YA)

Modern-day Hay-on-Wye, Wales

First-person narration from the point of view of Chap, an orphan who takes a seemingly fortuitous opportunity to impersonate a missing boy

Modern, blunt, suspenseful, informal

Chap is the protagonist, attempting to find out what happened to Cassiel while trying to escape detection. The antagonist is revealed to be Frank, who killed Cassiel and is trying to keep Chap contained.

Chap attempts to discover the fate of Cassiel while trying to keep up his charade so as not to be found out.

At the Hay on Fire festival, Chap confronts Cassiel's killer and sets his plan into motion. When he confronts the killer, someone catches it on video.

When Frank sees Chap for the first time, he says, "...perfect." Chap doesn't understand and asks him to repeat it, but he says something else. This foreshadows Chap's understanding of Frank's true situation and the eventual confrontation.

When Edie simply says, "I missed you, Cass," she is understating the depth of her grief. She refused to go to college in order to stay at home in the hopes that Cassiel might return someday, denoting a much more intense bereavement.

The book alludes to the Hay on Fire festival that occurs in Hay-on-Wye every year. This festival is in fact a real event, and the book's allusion to it is actually a reference to an outside occurrence.

The imagery of Cassiel's costume, which hides his features and identity dramatically, illustrates his possession of secrets and a hidden personality he keeps secret from those around him. This costume and imagery repeat when Chap wears the same costume, containing the same significance.

When Chap takes the opportunity to impersonate Cassiel, he thinks his life will become easier. However, it becomes much harder than he had anticipated, being forced to live in perpetual anxiety and fear of being found out.

There is a distinct parallel between Chap and Cassiel; at the level of imagery, both Chap and Cassiel wear the same costume to the Hay on Fire festival, and both confront Frank there. Both interfere with Frank's plans, and they both ostensibly hold the same charade at some point (a normal Cassiel façade). Being twins, the parallelism is drawn out farther by the end of the novel.

Whenever Frank calls Chap "Cassiel," he is essentially employing metonymy. He knows that Chap is not actually Cassiel, and yet he uses the word "Cassiel" to refer to him. In that sense, he is using a word other than Chap's actual name in substitution for it.

In chapter 7, "The steps were dusty, dancing with fluff and crumbs, dots of paper, and scraps of tobacco."