Opening
In these chapters, Eden McCrorey slips from sharp, protective friend to a senior-year version of herself built on numbness and avoidance. As Mara finally gets the boy she’s wanted, Eden drifts into hookups, alcohol, and silence—until a brutal flashback rips open the past and a forgotten birthday proves how alone she has become.
What Happens
Chapter 31: Junior Year
In the school library, Eden pretends to study while Mara flirts with Cameron. He invites Mara to a study session at his house with his friend Steve Reinheiser—and tosses a half-hearted invitation Eden’s way. Mara declines with calculated casualness, mentioning “this guy Alex I’m seeing.” It lands perfectly. Cameron looks stung and mutters that she should tell him when she gets “sick of that.”
After Cameron leaves, Mara buzzes with disbelief. Eden translates the moment: Cameron isn’t angry—he’s jealous. She reminds Mara that making him notice her is why she dated Alex in the first place. Mara, stunned and thrilled, echoes Eden’s verdict: “He’s finally here.” Eden plays strategist and cheerleader with ease, even as she keeps herself at a safe emotional distance.
Chapter 32: Junior Year
Eden ends up at Cameron’s house for the study group and is startled by how wholesome it is—suburban “Brady Bunch” normal, nothing like Cameron’s punk-goth vibe. While Mara is in the bathroom, Cameron quietly admits he likes Mara and asks Eden if he has a shot. Eden tells him he does; Mara showed up, didn’t she?
The doorbell rings. Steve arrives and freezes when he sees Eden. He’s not the “Fat Kid” from middle school anymore—lean, confident, almost cute—and he won’t look at her. After Cameron’s parents leave, Eden asks for something to drink and receives ginger ale, which makes her feel even more out of place. She slips outside for a cigarette. Steve follows, handing over her buzzing phone—Troy keeps texting—and meets her blunt question (“Do you hate me?”) with one of his own. The tension between them is new and complicated. Cameron calls them back inside before anything resolves, and Eden returns to the table feeling like the outsider in a scene she helped set.
Chapter 33: Senior Year
Months vanish. Eden, now a senior, narrates that she’s been with fifteen different guys. She hooks up with a nameless boy in a van in the school parking lot, a ritual that keeps her far away from the “scared-silent little girl” she used to be. The rumors have become her armor, and she wears them like a uniform.
She meets Mara afterward. Mara and Cameron are serious; Mara’s artsy, offbeat style has taken over, and her attention rarely strays from him. She tries to set Eden up with Steve, who keeps asking about her, but Eden shuts it down hard—good guys feel like traps. Their friendship runs on fumes—shared cigarettes, loud music, and long silences. At home, Eden drinks gin from her mother’s hidden stash and leaves a note saying she’s at Mara’s, keeping her lie machine humming.
Chapter 34: Senior Year
The morning after heavy drinking with Mara, Eden learns she’s already been volunteered for a double date: the movies with Mara, Cameron, and Steve. Feeling cornered, she says yes and resents it the entire way to the mall. Steve shows up overdressed and earnest; Eden wants to disappear. In the dark of a French film, she drifts—then lands in a memory.
She’s fourteen again, playing Monopoly with Kevin Armstrong, her brother’s best friend and her crush. He flatters her without her glasses on, reminds her of the day he saved her after a childhood accident, and loosens the rules—letting her out of jail, guiding the game. The closeness feels safe, special. When she says, “I trust you,” she sees it now as the moment he knows he can take what he wants. Watching her younger self from the outside, she wants to scream. She jerks awake in the theater—younger and older selves colliding—gasping, sweating, barely holding on.
Chapter 35: Senior Year
In study hall, Eden, Mara, Cameron, and Steve share a table. At the next one sits Amanda Armstrong, who keeps shooting Eden hard looks. Eden thinks about how Amanda’s lies helped cement her reputation—and how she’s learned to live inside that label. As Mara and Cameron whisper and laugh, Eden realizes an awful truth: Mara has forgotten that tomorrow is her seventeenth birthday.
The day arrives and confirms it—no midnight call, no decorated locker, no tradition. To avoid admitting the truth to her mother, Vanessa McCrorey, Eden claims she’s at the Cheesecake Factory with Mara and hides in the public library instead. Her hands begin to shake uncontrollably. A perfunctory birthday email from her brother, Caelin McCrorey, lands like an afterthought. She wanders the neighborhood until she stops outside Josh Miller’s house, an old crush’s place. His cat appears at the window. Eden is suddenly desperate to take it—any warm, living thing—because she has nothing else.
Character Development
Eden’s world narrows from strategist to survivor. The jump to senior year shows how thoroughly she builds herself into the rumors, trading closeness for control. Around her, friends and near-strangers form a mirror: some can’t see her, some try, and one man from the past still governs her mind.
- Eden McCrorey: Hardens into a persona of hookup and alcohol to keep vulnerability at bay; panic and shaking hands reveal how little control she actually has.
- Mara: Shifts from confidante to girlfriend-in-a-bubble; not cruel, but so absorbed in Cameron she forgets Eden’s birthday and the rituals that once anchored them.
- Steve Reinheiser: Reenters as kinder, confident, and curious about Eden; represents a version of normal Eden can’t accept.
- Kevin Armstrong: Absent in the present but fully exposed in memory as a careful, calculating groomer who weaponizes trust.
Themes & Symbols
Eden’s intrusive memory centers Trauma, Silence, and Secrecy. She never says the words out loud, so the past speaks for her—loudly. The flashback to Kevin’s grooming shows how abuse hides in ordinary scenes and how suppressed pain returns on its own timetable. Her shaking hands in the library embody trauma’s physical takeover.
Her senior-year persona underscores Identity and the Loss of Self. Eden turns rumors into armor, insisting on distance and control, yet the flashback undercuts the illusion, revealing Control and Powerlessness as the story’s central tug-of-war. The Monopoly game becomes a symbol of rigged rules: Kevin makes her feel chosen, then uses the intimacy and “exceptions” to claim power. Eden’s whispered “I trust you” is the handover he’s engineered.
Key Quotes
“Let me know when you get sick of that.” Cameron’s throwaway line to Mara reveals jealousy and opens the door to their relationship. It also shows Eden’s influence—Mara’s plan works—while reminding Eden she’s the strategist, not the star.
“He’s finally here.” Mara’s awed echo of Eden’s assessment captures the victory of a long crush fulfilled. The moment throws their contrast into relief: Mara steps into a love story while Eden steps further into detachment.
“I trust you.” Eden’s fourteen-year-old confession to Kevin is the fulcrum of the flashback. The phrase marks the exact moment he confirms her vulnerability and turns it into leverage, transforming a child’s faith into his permission.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence marks a breaking point. The time jump reveals Eden’s coping mechanisms calcified into identity, while the extended flashback finally names the machinery of her pain. The slow death of her friendship with Mara—sealed by the forgotten birthday—strips away her last safety net and proves how invisible trauma can make a person.
By the end, Eden stands alone, the past roaring in her ears and the present offering only substitutes for connection. The chapters clear the path for the story’s next movement: the difficult turn from secrecy toward Healing and Finding One's Voice.