Summary
Mrs. Latherly, the secretary and school nurse, tends to Tamaya’s hand. She applies maximum strength hydrocortisone ointment. Tamaya worries about telling her about the mud, thinking she will get Marshall in trouble, but she does admit “there was this fuzzy mud.” Latherly isn’t listening, and asks if she’s eaten peanuts recently, saying she might be allergic.
Latherly gives Tamaya an allergy pill and sends her back to class with a bandage over her wrist. Tamaya is disappointed to have missed the balloon writing exercise. Hope asks about her hand, and Tamaya says she isn’t supposed to have peanut butter. Meanwhile, she knows it must be the fuzzy mud.
At lunch, Hope and Monica tell Tamaya to lie to others and say she stabbed herself with a pencil, because rashes are gross. Tamaya is relieved to see Chad isn’t in the lunchroom. However, she immediately connects the mud to his disappearance when other boys exchange rumors about him being arrested or joining a motorcycle gang. Tamaya finds Marshall outside and demands that they inform Thaxton that Chad must still be in the woods. Marshall refuses, claiming they have nothing to do with Chad.
In class, Marshall tells himself he didn’t tell Thaxton the truth because he didn’t want to get Tamaya in trouble. But the truth is he was scared and ashamed. When the classroom phone rings, he is expecting it. But in Thaxton’s office, Marshall is surprised to be asked if he knows where Tamaya is; she didn’t come back after lunch and Monica doesn’t know where she is. Marshall feigns ignorance, saying she spoke to him at the basketball court and that maybe she went for her doctor’s appointment early. Soon after, an announcement comes on the PA system: the school is in lockdown until further notice. By then, Marshall has already slipped out and disappeared into the woods.
Leaves fall around Tamaya as she moves through the woods. She shouts Chad’s name. She stoops over a puddle of black mud and lowers a leaf. Upon raising it, the submerged half has disappeared. She hollers Chad’s name and continues deeper into the woods. The chapter ends with more multiplications: 2 x 65,536 = 131,072; 2 x 131,072 = 262,144.
Three months later, the Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment holds a new set of hearings, no longer secret. By then the entire world knows about Biolene and the disaster in Heath Cliff. The deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives testimony, explaining that the microorganism didn’t match anything in their database, and there was no cure for the rash. The president ordered a quarantine: no one could leave Health Cliff, where thousands were infected and five died. One was found in the woods, and four more were infected after. The organism had overwhelmed the environment.
On November 3, Tamaya is still searching for Chad. She finds herself ankle-deep in fuzzy mud. It sucks her feet in, but she falls to the side onto the leaf-covered ground and hauls her feet out. She continues toward the gully from the day before and shouts Chad’s name.
Back at the school, Thaxton’s eyes are blurry with tears after having spoken to Tamaya’s mother on the phone. She regrets not locking down as soon as she knew Chad was missing. Two children missing in two days. She doesn’t know Marshall is missing, too.
At two p.m., Tamaya is tingling all over. There are more mud puddles everywhere. She knows it must be ten times worse for Chad. Finally, she finds him. His face is a mass of blisters, pus and blood. His eyes are so swollen he can hardly see. She is overwhelmed by horror, revulsion, and pity. In a soft tone, she asks if he is hungry.
Analysis
When being treated by the school’s secretary-cum-nurse, Mrs. Latherly, Tamaya momentarily overcomes her fear of letting authority figures know she broke the rules and mentions the fuzzy mud she touched in the forest. But in an instance of dramatic irony, the reader witnesses Latherly—evidently a poor listener—missing the disclosure and misdiagnosing Tamaya with a peanut butter allergy. Rather than try again to tell Latherly, Tamaya goes away knowing it must have been the mud.
Tamaya runs into another conflict when she learns during the lunch hour that Chad is missing. Immediately connecting her rash to Chad’s disappearance, Tamaya goes to Marshall and insists they tell Mrs. Thaxton what happened. Marshall is stubborn, however, and refuses to involve himself. Torn between helping find Chad and implicating Marshall, Tamaya attempts to do the most good and cause the least harm: Rather than get Marshall into trouble by telling Thaxton the truth, Tamaya goes into the forest alone and tries to rescue Chad on her own.
The point of view stays with Marshall as he is called to Thaxton’s office. Although he assumes it has to do with Tamaya telling her the truth about what happened with Chad, Marshall is surprised to learn Tamaya is also missing. In another instance of dramatic irony, Marshall again lies to the headmistress, claiming he doesn’t know where she might have gone. In response to the emergency of two students going missing in two days, Thaxton puts the school on lockdown. She is unaware that a third—Marshall—is also gone.
When Sachar returns to the Senate hearing transcript, he introduces the major theme of infectious disease. The timeline has suddenly jumped forward three months. With the fates of Marshall, Tamaya, and Chad unresolved, the reader learns the characters are involved in what comes to be known as the Heath Cliff Disaster. The Senate transcripts reveal that Tamaya’s rash can be fatal, and caused five deaths in Heath Cliff. Injecting even more tension into the story, Sachar has the senator mention that one victim of the rash was found dead in the very woods to which the narrative is about to return.
Three months in the past, Tamaya is fighting her way through the increasingly muddy forest to reach Chad. The mud—made up of the mutated Biolene—is overwhelming the natural environment as it self-replicates beyond control. Tamaya continually trips, getting more and more of the toxic mud on her skin. The more she searches seemingly in vain, the more it seems Tamaya might not find Chad alive. However, she reaches him at last. As she predicted, the infectious rash covers his face, swelling his eyes shut. But Tamaya overcomes her horror at his disfigurement, demonstrating courage in the face of fear as she offers him her lunch.
