Opening
On the roof where he once fell, Jack Masselin spirals into despair over a brain that won’t let him recognize faces. When he breaks up with Libby Strout to “protect” her, both of them plunge into isolation—her confidence buckles, his guilt festers, and home troubles push him deeper into a refuge of wires and circuits.
What Happens
Chapter 91: Jack
Jack stands at the edge of the roof—his old accident site—wondering if another fall could “fix” what’s broken in his brain. Prosopagnosia distorts his world into a blur; he can’t summon a complete image of his mother’s face, let alone trust his memory of anyone. The sky feels like a “sky full of faces,” and he lies on the damp shingles, swallowed by the fear that he can’t truly see people.
He singles out a star and names it Libby, trying to hold onto it. As soon as he blinks, it disappears into the crowd of lights. The moment crystallizes his terror: even love can’t pin down a face his brain refuses to keep.
Chapter 92: Libby
Libby picks up Jack’s call and hears the damage in his voice before he speaks. He breaks up with her, saying he can’t “see” her and fears the only thing that anchors her in his mind is her size. If she changes, he worries she’ll vanish. He apologizes and hangs up before she can react.
The floor drops out from under her. She digs up her childhood copy of The Twelve Dancing Princesses and stares at Princess Elise—“perfect hair and face and figure”—and remembers writing her own name onto the dress. What if Elise had looked like Libby? The fairy tale curdles into proof of a cruel belief she thought she’d outgrown: that she’s unlovable because of her body.
Chapter 93: Jack
Jack types a long apology text and deletes every word. Nothing he writes can change the fact that his brain will always lose her face. He resigns himself to a longing that never resolves, convinced he’ll always be searching for her even when she’s right there.
Chapter 94: Libby
A week later, Libby checks the Damsels list and doesn’t find her name. She shrugs it off for her friend Bailey Bishop, then finds a new anonymous note in her backpack: “You aren’t wanted. (I told you so.)” She hides it, clinging to “I’m fine.”
Bailey refuses to play along. “You can’t always be fine,” she says, determined to be better. In the car, “Love Hurts” comes on, and Libby’s composure cracks—silent tears, no words. At school the next day, Jack passes with his friends, including Dave Kaminski, and doesn’t look at her. She feels invisible in a hallway full of eyes.
Chapter 95: Jack
Jack is relieved when Conversation Circle is canceled—he doesn’t have to face Libby. He watches her get into a car after school and wills her to look over. She doesn’t. At home, he asks his mother, Dusty Masselin, if she and his father are getting divorced. For a moment, fear flickers in her face, and he’s back in the hospital after the fall, watching her features morph each time she looks at him.
He thinks about Oliver Sacks’s ideas tying facial recognition to memory and feeling, and wonders if seeing his mother’s face would let him know her better. He tells her she deserves more than what she’s getting. Then he retreats to what he can control: in his room, he meticulously wires his robot’s brain, vowing to give it a hundred flawless “fusiform gyrus twelves,” the recognition power he lacks.
Character Development
The breakup carves both protagonists back to their core insecurities: Jack’s conviction that he’s broken and dangerous to love, and Libby’s fear that her body makes her unworthy. Around them, secondary characters sharpen into either support or strain.
- Jack Masselin: Hits an emotional low and sabotages intimacy to prevent imagined harm. Shows empathy and clarity with his mother, then copes by disappearing into precision engineering he can master.
- Libby Strout: Rejection (by Jack and the Damsels) rekindles old body-image wounds. Her “I’m fine” armor cracks, especially with Bailey, hinting at a turn toward vulnerability.
- Bailey Bishop: Steps up as an active, attentive friend who challenges Libby’s self-protective denial.
- Dusty Masselin: Her vulnerability surfaces; Jack sees beyond her strength to the fear underneath, complicating his understanding of her and their family.
Themes & Symbols
The section twists Seeing Beyond Appearances into a paradox. Jack’s literal face blindness becomes the pretext for ending the relationship, but the true failure is emotional sight: he can’t recognize that Libby already embraces him as he is. Their separation reactivates Loneliness and Isolation. Jack isolates on a roof and in his workshop; Libby moves through crowded halls feeling erased. The silence between them feels louder than any fight.
Self-Acceptance and Body Image buckles under stress. Libby’s return to the fairy tale page is a fast relapse—one image of “perfection” undoes weeks of progress. Pain flips her inner narrative from empowerment to exclusion, showing how fragile self-acceptance can be when external rejection mirrors internal doubt.
Symbols deepen the emotional map:
- The star Jack names “Libby” vanishes when he blinks, embodying how prosopagnosia erases faces the instant attention slips.
- The robot’s “brain” gives Jack mastery he can’t find in life; perfect wiring stands in for the faulty circuits of his own perception.
- The Twelve Dancing Princesses functions as a cultural script of beauty and worth; Princess Elise becomes the measuring stick Libby knows she can’t meet—and longs not to need.
Key Quotes
“there will always be this part of me that’s searching for her, even if she’s right there.”
Jack defines his condition as existential longing. The line reframes prosopagnosia not just as a neurological issue but as a grief that persists in the presence of love.
“You can’t always be fine.”
Bailey names Libby’s coping mechanism and offers a path out: honesty. The friendship’s health contrasts with Jack and Libby’s collapse, suggesting support systems beyond romance.
“You aren’t wanted. (I told you so.)”
The note echoes Libby’s darkest beliefs in a voice that feels both external and internal. It weaponizes her vulnerability and turns everyday spaces hostile.
“sinking... into the dark, deep core of the earth.”
Libby’s image of descent captures the physical weight of heartbreak. The metaphor collapses space and self-worth, making isolation feel geological—inescapable and massive.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters mark the novel’s emotional low point and the climax of the central conflict. By dismantling Jack and Libby’s bond, the narrative forces each to confront the fear beneath their connection: for Jack, that he’s irreparably broken; for Libby, that she’s unlovable. The addition of Jack’s family crisis raises external stakes, while his retreat into robotics shows how control becomes a refuge when relationships feel unsolvable. What breaks here must be rebuilt—individually first—if their love is to mean anything at all.