Summary
Part One: Simon Says, Chapter 3
Bronwyn’s narration picks up on the next day, Tuesday. Her friends Yumiko and Kate try to comfort her, but she can’t get her mind off Simon’s death. Not even her crush Evan can distract her. She remembers there’s “one thing Simon might have written” about her, but assumes that now, he never will. She runs into Nate in the hallway looking disheveled, and her friends call him a “total man-whore.”
After this incident, she heads to the school’s offices for a mandatory counseling session. Her teacher asks her if she’s interested in tutoring a student in chemistry. She declines, telling the reader that she was able to raise her D to an A, but that “nobody wants [her] sharing [her] strategies” for studying.
The narration skips ahead to Thursday from Cooper’s perspective. His beautiful girlfriend Keely is asking to hang out, but he declines. Just then, a voice from the school loudspeaker asks the four students who were present during Simon’s allergic reaction report to the office. He meets them there along with Principal Gupta and a policeman, Officer Budapest. The latter announces that Simon died from a dose of peanut oil.
None of the students recalls where Simon found his cup, except for Nate, who claims it came from a stack next to the sink. Officer Budapest has already heard about the prank cell phones, and begins to ask if any of them ever had “trouble” with Simon or worried about ending up on About That.
Cooper returns home, where his parents, twelve-year-old brother Lucas, and Nonny continue to discuss Simon. His father reminds him he has a baseball showcase coming up, as if he could forget when they all upended their lives to move to Bayview so he could play baseball year-round. Keely shows up at the house, but meanwhile, Cooper is texting with someone else he is romantically involved with.
Part One: Simon Says, Chapter 4
Addy’s narration picks up on Thursday night. She, too, keeps thinking about Simon, as well as his only friend, Janae. Jake arrives and tells Addy that Simon’s mother called him—the two used to be friends. She speculates that Simon in fact started the app to impress him. Jake used to defend him, stating that Simon never lied.
Jake invites Addy to the beach, but when he reveals his friend TJ will be there, she has a negative reaction that she tries to hide from him. Then, she and Jake have sex; her mother has given her the advice that “if you say no too much, pretty soon someone else will say yes.”
Nate’s narration continues on Thursday night. He reveals that he lives in a depressing house on the edge of town with his alcoholic father. His mother left when he was 11. To pay for minor expenses, Nate deals painkillers. He also has a loving relationship with his pet bearded dragon, Stan.
As he thinks over the events of the past few days, he remembers tormenting Bronwyn in grade school by stealing the baby Jesus from the set of their fourth-grade nativity play. His mother had always liked her—and so had he.
Nate’s text message inbox includes one from a recent fling, Amber, and another that links to a Tumblr post confessing to Simon’s murder. It strongly implies that the killer was present at the time of his death, and that everyone at Bayview High wanted him dead. Nate immediately realizes that he and the other three students will be under real suspicion.
Analysis
These two chapters reveal the four characters’ secrets (in part): Bronwyn cheated in chemistry class; Addy has a history of some kind with Nate’s friend TJ; Cooper is cheating on Keely; and Nate deals drugs.
These revelations further the theme of how stereotypes shape people’s real actions. Bronwyn views herself as an overachiever and cannot cope with the prospect of failure. On the other hand, Nate has not been raised in a loving environment, so selling drugs seems like a natural solution to his financial woes.
They also bring up the idea that one doesn’t always want what one should want. Cooper finds Keely to be the most beautiful girl in school, yet he clearly has feelings for someone else. Similarly, Addy’s relationship to Jake seems shaped by her low self-esteem: he’s popular and beautiful, but she fakes her desire for him, in part because her mother has warned her she will otherwise lose them.
Similarly, they outline the characters’ different relationships with their parents. While Bronwyn and Cooper are expected to excel and live in fear of letting down their parents, Addy and Nate have not been taught to think much of themselves. This introduces the theme of parents’ impact on their children.
Finally, the motif of social media continues. Even with About That inactive, new Tumblr posts spread like wildfire in the Bayview High community. While Nate’s friend imagines that the post bragging about Simon’s murder is a funny prank, Nate has enough experience on the wrong side of the law to understand its real implications. If social media is a type of “allergen,” the four students present before Simon’s death have all made contact with it.
