Finally

In Wendy Mass’s 2010 middle-grade contemporary novel Finally, protagonist Rory Swenson finally reaches the birthday she has been looking forward to for years. Now that she is 12, she has a long list of previously-forbidden privileges she wants to enjoy. Some are small—her first cup of coffee, for instance—and some are larger—like getting her own cell phone and attending her first boy-girl party. With the help of her friends and family, Rory gradually checks off the items on her list, encountering some unexpected and amusing obstacles and discovering some surprising things about herself along the way. 

Wendy Mass is the author of dozens of books for middle-grade and young-adult audiences, including stand-alone novels, like Every Soul a Star, A Mango-Shaped Space, and Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, and series, like Space Taxi, Time Jumpers, Twice Upon a Time, and the Candymakers books: The Candymakers and The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase. She has also co-written two books with author Rebecca Stead: Bob and The Lost Library. 

This study guide refers to the 2010 Scholastic Press hardcover edition of 12 Finally.

Plot Summary

Willow Falls resident Rory Swenson is very excited about her upcoming birthday. Her overprotective parents have denied her many privileges that her friends already enjoy, always telling Rory that she can do these things when she is 12. She has created a long list of things that she intends to do; her top priority is getting a cell phone. The day before her birthday, Rory falls into a drainpipe. She is rescued by a mysterious elderly woman who says that Rory will not get what she wants until she sees what she needs.

That evening, Rory learns that a movie will be filmed at her school. It will star Jake Harrison, a 14-year-old actor that Rory has a crush on. She adds a new goal to her list: meeting Jake Harrison.

On her birthday, Rory drinks her first cup of coffee and her parents agree to buy her a cell phone that afternoon. The drive to the phone store is terrifying: Rory is riding in the front seat for the first time and can see much more clearly how close other cars are and how fast they are traveling.

Almost immediately after getting her new phone, Rory loses it. Her father finds this very funny, but Rory is furious at herself. While waiting to transfer service to a new phone, Rory visits a nearby pet store. While she is there, a teenager does not have enough money for dog food, so Rory drops her last dollar on the floor and pretends that he must have dropped it. 

On her way home, Rory is surprised to get a call on her new phone. It turns out to be someone trying to call a pizza place. For the rest of the evening, she has to keep explaining to callers that she is not Johnny’s Pizzeria.

The next day, Rory stays home alone for the first time. She takes a hot bath with headphones, so she does not hear her parents coming home to check on her. When she does not answer them, they break the door down. They ground her but understand her explanation and accept her apology.

At school on the following day, the film crew arrives. In the lunch line, she recognizes a particular cafeteria worker as the elderly woman she met at the reservoir. 

Rory’s mother gives Rory a pair of emerald earrings from her grandmother and promises to get her ears pierced. 

On Saturday, Rory goes to babysitting class and meets Kira, a shy girl who has just moved to town. They bond over Kira’s scrapbook devoted to Jake Harrison. That evening, Rory babysits for the first time. It goes well, but her charge keeps secretly keeps turning back the clocks to postpone bedtime.

On Sunday, Rory and her best friend Annabelle go to the mall alone for the first time. Rory helps a woman trying to get a job at a bookstore, telling the manager how helpful the woman has been in finding a book. When Rory tries on makeup, she has a terrible allergic reaction. 

On Monday, Jake Harrison and his girlfriend, Madison Waters, are at Rory’s school. In a bathroom stall, Rory overhears Madison make a phone call criticizing Jake and Willow Falls. The rest of the day goes much better: Rory and Annabelle are chosen to be extras in the movie, and Jake Harrison seems to pay particular attention to Rory during the auditions.

Knowing that her legs will be exposed during the movie’s soccer-game scene, Rory tries shaving her legs and using hair-removal wax. She ends up with two heavily-bandaged legs. During the filming of the soccer scene, the Assistant Director notices Rory’s bleeding legs and assigns her a special background role as an injured player being tended by a doctor. Jake Harrison talks to Rory twice, creating some animosity from Madison.

Rory’s parents surprise her by buying her a rabbit, but when she wakes up to see its red eyes glowing at her in the darkness, she screams. Rory names him Bunny. Rory’s mother takes her to the pet store to food for Bunny. On the way, Rory helps an elderly woman catch her escaped dog. 

Rory decides to get her ears pierced, but the first earring makes her ear swell up—she has a rare allergy to gold. That night, Rory wakes with the sensation that she is being smothered to find Bunny sitting on her chest. The next day, Jake Harrison sees Rory’s swollen ear. He laughs, but also expresses sympathy, which irritates Madison. Madison breaks up with him, angry about him refusing a new role in a big film. Since Madison now refuses to kiss him in the movie, Rory suggests substituting Kira, who looks like Madison from behind. Kira is so happy and excited that she faints.

After school, Rory goes with her mother and brother to the community center. There, she helps a little boy and learns that his older sister has missed an important ballet audition by one minute. Rory cleverly turns back the clock in the audition room, so the girl is able to try out. That night, Rory has a nightmare that someone is smothering her, and she wakes to find Bunny sitting on her head. She decides to return him to the pet store.

Rory’s mother takes her to get contact lenses, but Rory struggles to get them in and out of her eyes. She scratches her cornea and has to wear an eye patch for two days. The next day, Jake cracks up when he sees her eye patch, but the Assistant Director creates a scene that shows Rory’s eye getting injured when Jake accidentally opens a locker into her face. Rory gets paid extra, and she has the pleasure of seeing Madison irritated.

At Rory’s first boy-girl party, she spends most of the time watching other kids, content to be in the background. Amanda tells her that really noticing other people is a special gift of hers. When the kids at the party play a kissing game, Rory decides to go home. While she is waiting for her mother, she sees Sasha, the ballet dancer from the community center. Sasha asks if Rory wants to wait for her mother at Sasha’s nearby house.

At Sasha’s house, Rory is shocked to realize that she has already met all of her family: Sasha’s younger sister is Kira, her youngest brother is the boy from the community center daycare, another brother is a student she helped find his class on his first day, and another brother is the boy from the pet store who needed a dollar to buy dog food. Sasha’s mother is the woman Sasha helped get the bookstore job, and her great-aunt is the woman who rescued Rory from the drainpipe at the reservoir.

The great-aunt, Angelina, now explains her cryptic prophecy. Rory has a special gift for understanding others, but she also needs to use this gift to better understand herself. Rory realizes that her list is based on other people’s ideas of what a 12-year-old should want rather than really well-suited to who Rory is. Rory needs to take the time to discover what she really does want. On her way home, Rory decides that she wants to spend the evening building a fort, like she did when she was younger.