Summary
Chapter 13 describes Conrad’s recalcitrant behavior this summer. Rather than engaging with Steven and Jeremiah as he did every other summer, he seems to prefer being alone in his room, playing guitar. We also learn of his mother’s concern—he quit the football team at school, despite being the star player—and she worries that he may be doing drugs.
The other chapters are primarily vignettes that describe the past. Chapters 10, 12, and 13 treat Belly’s relationship with her parents. Laurel is divorced from Belly’s father, we learn, and the kids spend weekends with their father, in a small apartment. Though Belly loves her father, she also finds some of his behavior off-putting and uncomfortable, including the fact that, as a professor, he dates his PhD students, and that he continually lights sticks of incense in his apartment even though Belly is allergic to them. In contrast, her mother, Belly reflects, is rational, responsible, and seems to know exactly what she does and does not want.
Chapters 11, 12, and 14 detail Conrad and Jeremiah’s relationships with their parents. The boys’ father, Adam Fisher, is a banker who cuts an imposing figure when around, but he rarely joins his family at the summer house because of how much he works. Susannah, on the other hand, is bubbly, personable, and, we learn, resilient—she fought and defeated breast cancer when the boys were preteens.
In this section, a few chapters (16, 18) treat two summers ago, the summer a 14-year-old Belly brought her best friend Taylor along with her to Cousins Beach. Whereas Belly was “chubby” and wearing a one-piece swimsuit to hide her body that summer, Taylor was slim, self-assured, and confident that she would win Conrad’s heart. Belly’s narration of this flashback reveals feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, provoked by Taylor’s interactions with the Fisher boys. She realized that no matter which of the Fisher boys’ attention Taylor won, she would feel jealous.
Eventually, after being almost entirely ignored by Conrad, Taylor had a brief fling with Jeremiah. The two kissed, but Belly and Jeremiah also kissed—Belly's first.
The flashback narrative of Chapters 16 and 18 becomes relevant when we learn that in the present summer, 16-year-old Belly now has Jeremiah's romantic attention. In fact, his interest in her is so strong that suddenly Steven feels like the one being left out. Further, in contrast to the summer in which Taylor came along and captured Jeremiah’s full attention, Belly realizes suddenly, while at the movies with Jeremiah, that he “wants to kiss [her].”
In fact, in Chapter 17, Jeremiah offers to teach Belly how to drive stick shift, a skill she has been wanting to learn but which no one has been willing to teach her. In so doing, Jeremiah ends up jilting Steven in their plan to go to the driving range together. Belly reflects on how nice it was of the younger Fisher boy to do such a thing.
Analysis
Chapters 10-18 continue with the theme of difference that is introduced in Chapters 1-9: Belly recognizes that this summer is different, that this time around, it is she and not Taylor who has the attention of Jeremiah Fisher.
However, this section of the novel treats the past far more than it does the present: we can think of this excess of flashback narratives as Han’s attempt to lay the groundwork for themes to come. That is, Han will use each character’s personal history, including childhood and adolescent experiences and parental relationships, to build characters with particular personalities and interior psychologies. These personalities will in turn govern how the present-day characters react to and interact with each other.
First, we learn that Belly and Steven’s relationships with their divorced parents are complicated: they love both their parents, but also find them to be difficult at times. In particular, their mother Laurel is rational and unemotional to a fault at times, while their father is frequently the opposite—scattered, emotional, and not always the most responsible. However, because of Laurel's almost radical rationality, Belly frequently feels a disconnect with her mother. Unlike Susannah, who is warm and open, Laurel is uninviting, and at times seemingly uninterested.
This sibling pair’s family dynamic is then contrasted with Jeremiah and Conrad’s relationships with Susannah and Adam, their parents. While this parent pair is still married, Adam is frequently away at work, and, when the kids were younger, Susannah fought breast cancer. Their mother’s illness causes pain and fear for Jeremiah and Conrad both, but also builds resilience and maturity. We learn that it is actually Belly sympathizing with a young Jeremiah’s complicated feelings about his mom’s cancer that begins the friendship between the two.
The contextualizing that Jenny Han does in these chapters not only gives us a glimpse into each character’s psychology, but also cleverly sets up the potential romance between Jeremiah and Belly. Because the two have a longstanding friendship formed through emotionally supporting one another in their youth, there is the potential for something romantic to blossom.
