48 pages • 1-hour read
Every Heart A Doorway
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Part 2, Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “With Your Looking-Glass Eyes”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Lightning to Kiss the Sky”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, bullying, and emotional abuse.
The school can hold about 100 children, but there are only 40 in attendance at present. The silent, empty spaces make Nancy feel as though she’s surrounded by the ghosts of students who failed to return to their worlds, and she flees to a shadowy grove of trees. Jill finds her crying there and expresses sympathy about the difficulties of being surrounded by people who went to “pastel dream worlds full of sunshine and rainbows” (65). Nancy explains that she hoped to earn a place among the Lady of Shadows’ entourage but wasn’t permitted to wear colors besides her pomegranate hair ribbon until she had proven herself. Jill says that she wears light colors because her Master liked the way that they showed bloodstains. She claims that the Master taught her wonderful things but was unhappy with Jack. Jill believes that Jack was banished on purpose but that she’ll be welcomed back to the Moors any time now.
After Jill leaves, Kade reveals that he heard the girls’ conversation from his position up in a tree. He deduces that the source of Nancy’s distress is Lundy’s grim observations about their odds of returning to their worlds. He shares that he’s certain that Prism will never welcome him back and mentions that Eleanor can still go home. Because adults struggle in Nonsense worlds, Eleanor plans to run the school until “her mind slips” and “she’ll be able to tolerate the Nonsense again” (68). Kade doesn’t want to return to Prism, but he doesn’t want to forget his time there because it helped him discover who he is. As Kade accompanies Nancy back to school, he observes, “You’re pretty when you smile” (70).
The students take the core curriculum required by the state plus electives like “A Traveler’s History of the Great Compass” (71). Nancy is exhausted when she returns to her room after her first day of classes. Sumi delivers a message from Eleanor giving her permission to skip that night’s group therapy. Nancy asks Sumi how old she is, and Sumi answers that she’s “[o]ld enough to know what [she’s] losing in the process of being found” (72). Alone in her room, Nancy practices her statuesque stillness before going to bed.
The next morning, Nancy is awakened by screams. Hurrying out into the hallway, she discovers Sumi’s dead body, which is missing both hands. Some of the girls suspect the new student, but Eleanor knows at once that Nancy is innocent. A girl named Loriel accuses Jack of murdering Sumi because she once dissected a student’s guinea pig. To avoid a scene, Kade suggests that Jack goes to Nancy’s room. Jack explains that she and Jill had overbearing, perfectionist parents who decided that Jill was “the smart one” and Jack was “the pretty one.” When the twins were 12, they found a staircase at the bottom of an old trunk that led to a strange world with a red moon and a moor between mountains and a sea. Jack became the star pupil of a man named Dr. Bleak, who knew how to reanimate the dead. Meanwhile, Jill stayed with the vampiric Master, who fed on her blood. Five years later, a mob of angry villagers marched on the castle, and Dr. Bleak sent the twins back to their original world. According to Jack, Jill had to be sedated to make the journey. The twins found themselves back in the trunk and still aged 17. Their parents sent them to Eleanor’s school within a month of their return.
Nancy helps Jack and Kade box up her deceased roommate’s things and place them in the attic. She finds a photograph of Sumi looking solemn in a school uniform, and she realizes that her friend’s life was one of quiet, stifling conformity before she found the liberating Nonsense world of Confection. Kade suggests that he spend the night in Nancy’s room for safety’s sake and asks Jack to be careful because she and her twin are easy scapegoats.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Survivors, for a Time”
After Sumi’s murder, the school struggles to go about its usual routine. At dinner that night, Loriel pours a bowl of soup on Jack’s head. Half of the students laugh at her, and the other half watch in silent approval. Nancy berates them for their horrible rudeness. At group therapy, Loriel declares her certainty that Jack killed Sumi, but Jack retorts, “If I had decided to start killing my classmates, would I have left a body?” (94). Lundy encourages the students to leave the matter with Eleanor and the police and to stay with a friend at all times.
Loriel shares about her time in Webworld, a land ruled by spiders. Her adventures honed her already keen vision. The Queen of Dust offered to make Loriel a princess, but the girl decided to tell her parents first. She returned about two years ago and has been looking for the door back ever since. Lundy tells Loriel that some doors only open once, which Nancy considers an unnecessarily cruel thing to say. A weary-looking Eleanor joins the group and says that there’s still hope for all of them. She calls on her students to treat one another with kindness and respect because they all understand what it’s like to be outcasts. Kade echoes this sentiment by urging his fellow students to take care of their school, which he calls his “forever home” (100). The next morning, Loriel’s roommate, Angela, finds Loriel’s body in the front yard. Her eyes have been removed.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Bodies We Have Buried”
The staff gather all the students in the dining room. Lundy informs them that Loriel has been murdered and urges them not to go anywhere alone. Sumi was Eleanor’s ward, but Loriel’s parents were still involved in her life, so Eleanor is debating how to proceed. A boy named Christopher suggests that Eleanor hide the truth from Loriel’s family so that the school won’t be shut down. Jack worries that if that happens, many of the students will end up involuntarily hospitalized and the rest will be unhoused.
Eleanor asks the students to hide Loriel’s body. Although she feels like a monster to ask this of them, she believes it is the only way to protect the school. Jack, Nancy, Kade, and Christopher volunteer to dispose of Loriel’s remains. Unlike the others, Kade’s adventures in his portal world didn’t involve handling the deceased. Nancy soothes him and asks him to keep watch. Although Nancy, Jack, and Christopher each have a different understanding of death, they share a great “love for those who ha[ve] passed” (109). The students carry the body to the basement, where Jack and Jill live. During her inspection of the body, Jack discovers that Loriel was struck from behind and that she was still alive when her eyes were removed. Christopher reveals that he can communicate with skeletons, so Jack submerges Loriel in acid that will dissolve her flesh.
While the acid takes effect, the students leave the basement. Jack is worried that Jill might attack someone if the other students antagonize her. She explains that Jill used to want to leave the Moors because the vampiric Master killed all the children she tried to befriend. Jack and Christopher look for Jill in the dining hall while Nancy and Kade search outside. Nancy is aesthetically attracted to Kade, which makes her nervous around him. She suggests that someone is taking specific body parts from the students in an attempt “to take away the things [they] treasure most” (123). Kade speculates that the killer could be someone who’s so miserable that they don’t want anyone else to be happy.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Cocoa”
When Nancy and Kade enter the manor, Lundy looks at Nancy suspiciously. This causes the girl to worry that Lundy thinks she’s the killer. Kade admits that the timing makes her a logical suspect but professes his certainty in her innocence. Jack is anxious because she and Christopher didn’t find Jill either. Regaining her customary calm, Nancy expresses her faith in the group’s ability to solve the mystery and keep each other safe. Jack prepares a cup of hot cocoa for each of her companions that mimics flavors from their respective portal worlds. She puts pomegranate molasses in Nancy’s mug.
The group can’t find any link between Sumi and Loriel. Nancy’s theory about the murderer taking the girls’ most important body parts leads Jack to suggest that the killer is after the “intangible something” that helped each of them survive in their portal worlds (133). Alarmed, Christopher asks, “[S]ome mad scientist is trying to build a perfect girl out of the best parts of us?” (134). Jill enters the attic and scolds her twin for leaving her alone for so long. Jack and Christopher return to the lab to see if they can learn anything from Loriel’s skeleton.
Part 2, Chapters 4-7 Analysis
In the first half of Part 2, the suspense heightens as the fantasy story evolves into a murder mystery. Part 2’s title, “With Your Looking-Glass Eyes,” connects to the novella’s distinctive blend of genres. It alludes to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, which continues Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, and foreshadows Loriel’s murder and the revelation that she knows the killer’s identity. Sumi’s and Loriel’s deaths accelerate the plot and draw Nancy closer to supporting characters like Kade and Jack. The protagonist’s position as the school’s newest student already marked her as an outsider, and this takes on dangerous implications in light of the killings. As Kade acknowledges, “You’re right about being the most logical suspect—new girl, no strong ties, came from an Underworld” (127). Adding to the stakes, the world’s hostility toward the students places them all at risk even if they survive the murderer’s rampage. Jack explains that if the school closes, students who are not wanted by their families “will be out on the streets. No high school degrees, no way of coping with this world, which doesn’t want [them] back” (106). This threat contributes to the tense mood of these chapters. In addition, Christopher foreshadows the killer’s motive when he suggests that the murderer is “trying to build a perfect girl out of the best parts” of the students (134). His hypothesis is proven true when Jill reveals that she is building a skeleton key from her victims’ remains in the final section.
McGuire advances the theme of belonging by providing more details about the connections between the students and their portal worlds. According to Eleanor, the children are drawn to particular worlds “by need and by sympathy. Not the emotion—the resonance of one thing to another” (97). This indicates that the portal worlds are not just places they stumbled into by accident and learned to appreciate; they’re the students’ true homes because they correspond to something innate within them as individuals. Further developing the theme of belonging, Sumi and the twins’ backstories establish a pattern in which portal worlds allow the students to explore aspects of their identities that their families stifled. For example, the Nonsense world of Confection freed Sumi from solemnity and conformity so that she no longer had to be the “sad-eyed girl in a school uniform” (85). This pattern also connects to the theme of familial expectations versus individual needs because the portal worlds allow the children to cast off their parents’ limiting views of them and decide for themselves who they are. In the Moors, the Addams twins swapped their parentally imposed labels. Jack went from being “the pretty one” to being a “mad” scientist’s protégé, while Jill went from being “the smart one” to being the lovely darling of her Master. The fact that the sisters are identical twins underscores how arbitrary familial expectations can be.
The Dangers of Hope and Loyalty illuminate the characters’ perspectives and foreshadow the killer’s motives. Even though she gains friends during the investigation, Nancy’s ultimate loyalty is to the Halls of the Dead. She says that the Lord of the Dead “loved” her (65), and she vows that she would “do anything to go home” (69). While Nancy describes the Lord of the Dead as a caring teacher, Jill calls her bloodthirsty mentor her “Master,” which suggests that her loyalty is misplaced. In addition, Jill hints at her disloyalty to her sister when she blames Jack for her banishment: “The Master wanted to be rid of Jack. She didn’t deserve what we had” (67). Jill’s explanation of the sisters’ return to their original world is eventually revealed to be a fabrication to obscure her own guilt. As the next section reveals, Jill’s loyalty to her Master and her hope of returning to him lead her to commit murder.
Pomegranates, which symbolize Nancy’s home, make an appearance in Chapter 7 when Jack prepares hot chocolate with pomegranate molasses for Nancy. The gesture is a rare instance of unveiled kindness from the usually blunt and aloof scientist, and Jack’s compassion is rooted in the students’ shared longing for their true homes. The quiet, cozy moment breaks up the tension of this section and fulfills Eleanor’s speech to her students about the importance of supporting one another in this time of crisis: “This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it’s you” (99). Even as fear and suspicion fester within the broader student body, the protagonist and her allies become a source of belonging for one another.
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