49 pages 1 hour read

April Henry

The Girl I Used to Be

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016

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Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Scatter My Bones”

A girl runs through the South Oregon woods with bound hands, chased by a killer. She reflects on how different her life was three weeks ago and wonders whether Duncan will ever know what happened to her. She notes that if she stops running, she will die, and that it’s likely she will die anyway. She resolves to fight for her life. 

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Kaleidoscope Shifts”

Detective Campbell and Chaplain Farben arrive at Olivia’s apartment, calling her by her old name of Ariel Benson. They tell her that the police have finally found her father, Terry, who has been missing for 14 years and suspected of killing Olivia’s mother, Naomi, abandoning his child at a Walmart, and then leaving the country. Olivia has always believed her father to have been guilty of the murder. She thinks that they have finally hunted him down as a fugitive and is confused when they say that his jawbone was found in the woods a mile from where her mother’s body was discovered. The police now believe that her father was murdered at the same time as her mother. This new information causes a radical shift in the way Olivia sees her life and her understanding of her parents.