About a Boy

Marcus has to leave Rachel’s house because Ali threatened to kill him if Will went out with Rachel. Will finds Marcus trying to escape, and brings him back to Rachel’s. There, Ali apologizes to Marcus and observes how when Will is with Rachel, his “way of looking” at her is seductive (201). Marcus practices a similar look on Ellie, but she thinks he has gone cross-eyed. When Marcus is waiting for her outside the newsstand, Lee Hartley and his gang approach and seize his glasses. Ellie beats up the bullies and sends them away, and Marcus is overcome by her beauty and strength. 

Will realizes that he cannot keep lying to Rachel for the long term, so he awkwardly confesses that Marcus is not his son. He also tells her the story of his involvement with Marcus, though he leaves out the part about joining SPAT because it would reflect poorly on him. He confesses that he thought mentioning Marcus would make him “more interesting” (209). Rachel admits that she had thought Will was “sort of blank” because he had no passion (210). However, she recognizes that Will and Marcus’s relationship is real. Will feels intensely vulnerable, like the parents of SPAT, whose problems, he considers, began from the moment they fell in love and trusted someone.

Marcus notices that his mother has started crying uncontrollably again. When he tells Will about it, Will says that he is unqualified to help and cannot talk to Fiona. Marcus thinks about telling Ellie, but she is upset because Kurt Cobain attempted suicide. When Ellie says she thinks Cobain will eventually succeed in his suicide attempts, even though he has a baby daughter, Marcus is distraught, runs away, and decides to skip his next classes. Ellie finds him hiding in the boys’ bathroom and apologizes for her earlier outburst. She admits that Marcus would know more than her about what it is like when someone close to you attempts suicide. Marcus cries, and Ellie sits with him.

Will feels remorseful about his dismissal when Marcus asked him to “do something about Fiona” (220). He realizes it is his duty to get involved, but the thought of Fiona’s depression intimidates him. Will feels out of his depth, so he goes to see Rachel, who is “buoyant” enough to “keep him afloat” (222). Will tells Rachel about Fiona and her troubles, and they discuss the meanings of life. Rachel asserts that the focal point of Will’s life is Marcus and that she admires Will for his resourcefulness in coping with a life full of blanks. Will and Rachel have sex for the first time; afterward, Rachel offers to talk to Fiona. 

Fiona tells Marcus he must go to Cambridge to see his father, who has broken his collarbone and sustained a concussion after falling off a window ledge. Marcus is annoyed but agrees to go when Ellie is eager to accompany him. When he is due to meet Ellie at King’s Cross, Marcus notices a headline: Kurt Cobain successfully killed himself. He insists on leading Ellie blindfolded through the station so she does not see the paper. However, on the train, she pulls out a bottle of vodka and announces she is getting drunk because she has seen the headline. Marcus considers that Ellie “could just blow up in his face any time (238).

Will arranges to meet Fiona and Rachel in a pub, but when Rachel does not turn up, he is left to deal with Fiona alone. Over pizza, Fiona relates the facts of her depression, which “made her see everything through a greeny-brown gauze” (245). She also reveals that she never wanted to be a mother and sometimes hates Marcus “with a passion that frightened her” (244). When, in the cab home, they hear that Kurt Cobain killed himself, Will is worried about Marcus. Feeling a sense of premonition, he asks to listen to Marcus’s answering machine message. They learn that Marcus is at a police station in Royston. 

The chapter goes back to when Ellie and Marcus are on the train; she keeps threatening to pull the emergency stop button. Marcus no longer wants Ellie to be his girlfriend because he sees how Ellie, like Will, needs to “invent” trouble in her life and idealize dead drug-takers because she has an absence of real problems (249). Ellie gets off at Royston, and Marcus follows her. She throws her boot through a shop window with a cut-out of Kurt Cobain in it, claiming it is commercially exploiting the singer’s death. She and Marcus are arrested because of her vandalism. They are taken to the police station and their parents are called. Marcus’s father Clive arrives with Lindsey, and Marcus is suddenly angry and delivers a speech where he deems his father “useless” (255). They learn that Will, Fiona, and Ellie’s mother are on their way.

Will learns that Rachel stood him up on purpose so that he would confront Fiona himself. Will, Fiona and Ellie’s mom, Katrina, drive to the police station. Will marvels at Marcus’s ability “to make all these connections, and yet remain so unconnected himself” (259).

At the police station, Ellie must face Ruth, the young woman who owns the record shop. Ruth looks like Ellie’s doppelgänger and is also an ardent Kurt Cobain fan. Ellie is lost for words and genuinely remorseful. When Fiona, Will, and Katrina arrive, Fiona makes a frenzied speech about being a bad mother and begs the police to let him start with a clean slate. Marcus calls her crazy and insists that he has not done anything. When they leave the police station and go to dinner, Marcus confirms that Ellie is not right for him and he needs someone “less different” from him (265). Will, who is thinking about Rachel, feels that differences are a blessing. 

Marcus stays in Cambridge with Clive, and the two have a private talk. Clive admits he has been an ineffective, absent father. While he considers that Marcus needs a father, Marcus thinks he will be fine because, even though his parents are useless, he has expanded his network and, in a city like London, will always find people on whom he can rely. He is confident about his ability to handle life. Clive asks how he would feel if Lindsey had a baby. Marcus says he would be fine with it because he knows the value of having “extra people around him” (272).

In the book’s final chapter, Will feels more vulnerable than ever, given how much he loves Rachel and fears that he might lose her. He wants to marry her but feels like he does not deserve her. He has developed the habit of taking Marcus and Ali out on Saturdays; he notices that Marcus has grown up and seems older than Ali.

While Marcus is still friends with Ellie and Zoe, he is more “circumspect” in his speech, and the old childish version of him “was disappearing” (275). Will observes that Marcus “had developed a skin—the kind of skin Will had just shed” (277). Will considers that, to gain their new identities, both he and Marcus had to lose something else; Will had to lose his coolness to be with Rachel, and Marcus had to lose his idiosyncrasies to fit in with the kids at school and not be bullied.