CHARACTER
How to Make Friends with the Darkby Kathleen Glasgow

Tiger Tolliver

Tiger Tolliver

Quick Facts

Who They Are

At heart, Tiger Tolliver is a sheltered girl who knows exactly two things: the contours of her small life with June and the ache for something bigger—school dances, a first kiss, a chance to feel normal. Physically, she’s a living mismatch: “dark and straight hair” and freckled skin next to June’s “short, light mop” and “creamy, blemish-free face,” a daily reminder of the father she doesn’t know and the parts of herself that feel alien. That mismatch becomes an inner metaphor; Tiger sees herself as a “girl-bug in a jar,” observed but untouchable, wings pressed tight, stunned by loss and afraid to move.

Personality & Traits

Tiger’s voice is raw, observant, and painfully honest. She’s a bookish teen who measures her life against stories and discovers she’s trapped in one she never wanted. The same intensity that fuels her longing for independence also fuels her grief, which flashes as anger before it matures into empathy.

  • Insecure and self-conscious: Poverty and June’s quirks—like collecting roadside clothes—make Tiger feel exposed at school, especially next to glossy peers like Lupe Hidalgo.
  • Introspective observer: A heavy reader, she narrates in sharp images (“girl-bug in a jar”), noticing textures and moods in high relief.
  • Dependent, yet craving autonomy: “If I don’t have her, I don’t have anything,” she admits, even as she fights for the dance with Kai Henderson and the right to choose her clothes.
  • Angry and volatile: After June’s death, she lashes out—verbally at Kai and physically at a classmate—grief erupting as destructive heat.
  • Toughened by experience: Across moves and losses, she grows into resilience and survival, learning to adapt, to ask for help, and to claim space without apology.

Character Journey

Tiger begins with a “small life,” welded to June’s routines and rules, torn between love and the urge to breathe on her own. The catastrophe—June’s sudden aneurysm—splits her in two: before and after. She staggers into the fluorescent quiet of a hospital room and then into the blur of placements, narrating herself as a “girl-bug in a jar, watching everything on mute.” Georgia’s strictness and LaLa’s unruly kindness expose her to how other kids survive, including the fierce pragmatism of Thaddeus Roach. The revelation of Dustin "Dusty" Franklin and Shayna Lee Franklin fractures her origin story again, forcing her to redefine “family” beyond June’s secrets. Through the ranch, Grief Group, and unlikely kin like Mae-Lynn Carpenter, Tiger begins to translate rage into understanding. By the end, she’s no longer only a daughter of loss; she’s a sister, a friend, and a survivor restructuring a self that can stand in the dark—and look outward.

Key Relationships

  • June Tolliver: Tiger’s love for June is absolute, but also claustrophobic. Their final fight becomes the fault line under everything that follows, pushing Tiger to see June not as an idealized protector but as a complicated woman whose fear and secrecy shaped Tiger’s world.
  • Cake Rishworth: With Cake Rishworth, Tiger has a lifeline to “before”—snacks, rides, blunt truth. Their steadfast friendship models reliability and nonjudgment, proving that ordinary loyalty can be as salvific as any miracle.
  • Shayna Lee Franklin: Tiger’s twenty-year-old half-sister is not the family she imagined and not prepared to be one either. Their early misfires evolve into a tentative, hard-won bond that embodies family as an action rather than a bloodline.
  • Kai Henderson: The crush who symbolizes normalcy—a dance, a kiss—becomes a site of rupture when he abandons her at the hospital. Tiger’s anger at Kai is less about romance than about innocence shattered and the terror of being truly alone.
  • Dustin “Dusty” Franklin: Meeting her father destabilizes Tiger’s identity and reframes June’s choices. Imperfect and late, Dusty forces Tiger to confront the difference between the parent she needed and the people she actually has.
  • Thaddeus Roach: A survivor who reads the system fluently, Thaddeus becomes a blunt mentor-brother. He teaches Tiger practical skills and a fierce, unsentimental compassion that helps her shed shame.
  • Lupe Hidalgo: Once a tormentor, Lupe meets Tiger in the “Big Suck” of grief. Their uneasy solidarity turns a bully-victim script into a shared language of loss, making Tiger more capacious in her empathy.

Defining Moments

Tiger’s path is punctuated by shocks that force her to name what she’s feeling, then choose what to do with it. Each moment shifts her from passivity to participation in her own life.

  • The final fight with June: In the car, Tiger screams, “Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone?” The words seed lifelong guilt and forgiveness, making grief feel punitive—and galvanizing her search for a kinder story about herself and June.
  • Identifying June’s body: The sterile hospital room freezes time; Tiger’s clinical noticing is the onset of dissociation. It’s where her “before” life ends, and her survival instincts begin.
  • Slapping Ellen Untermeyer: Grief erupts as violence, leading to suspension and contact with the juvenile system. The incident literalizes Tiger’s internal shatter and forces institutional scrutiny she can’t dodge.
  • Discovering Dusty and Shayna: Voicemails from Bonita reveal hidden family, detonating Tiger’s origin story. The truth is not comforting—but it gives her new ground to stand on.
  • Watching June’s video: On her mother’s phone, June offers answers and love Tiger can finally hear. The message lets Tiger mourn a person—not a pedestal—and begin to integrate the loss.
  • Washing the Mourning Dress: Choosing to clean and set aside the ivory lace dress is a quiet, decisive act. It marks Tiger’s turn from performative grief toward sustainable remembrance.

Symbols & Motifs

  • The Mourning Dress: The ivory lace dress becomes a wearable altar to June—and to Tiger’s self-punishment. As it stains and frays, it mirrors the toll of carrying grief as penance; washing it signals self-forgiveness and a new, self-authored identity.
  • The Girl-Bug in a Jar: This recurring image distills Tiger’s paralysis and isolation after June’s death. Crawling “out of the jar” evokes choosing agency while still guarding tender “wings,” a realistic portrait of healing that is brave, not grandiose.

Essential Quotes

I feel like I was one girl before my mother died, and another girl after, and now, at the end of this story, still another girl, crawling out of the jar, but keeping her wings close.
This line maps Tiger’s evolving selfhood across three eras: innocence, collapse, and careful re-emergence. The “wings close” image honors trauma’s residue while affirming movement toward agency.

I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside: splintered into a million bloody and sharp pieces.
Tiger names grief as both emotion and urge. By externalizing her desire for destruction, she shows how mourning can masquerade as cruelty—and why she must learn safer ways to hold pain.

This is what I meant when I called it the Big Suck: it’s all bullshit, and it’s never going to feel any better.
A thesis of despair that Tiger ultimately complicates. The line defines her low point, making later glimmers of connection and purpose feel earned rather than easy.

You don’t honor your mother by wearing a dress, honey. You honor your mother by remembering her, and holding her dear, right here.
This corrective reframes grief as practice, not performance. It frees Tiger from rituals that punish her body and redirects her toward memory, story, and daily love.

Sometimes you need to open yourself to the possibility of the miraculous, Tiger Tolliver. Sometimes you just do.
Against the “Big Suck,” this invitation to hope is not denial—it’s discipline. Tiger’s growth lies in holding both: the darkness that is real and the miracle that is possible.