Highly Illogical Behavior

Lisa Praytor is a highly driven high school student in her junior year. Although she has most of what she wants, including a “handsome without being threatening” (8-9) boyfriend, she recognizes a special opportunity when she meets Solomon’s mother. Lisa can recall Solomon’s panic attack in the fountain at school; she had even written an opinion piece for the school paper coming to Solomon’s defense. Lisa “never knew him, really, but she’d always thought he looked nice, like the kind of guy who’d hold a door open for someone else without a thought” (9).

When Lisa sees a dentist advertisement for Solomon’s mom, Valerie Reed, Lisa procures an appointment and asks after Solomon. Valerie, initially taken aback that a young person knows or remembers her son, reveals that Solomon in now homeschooled and no longer has friends. Lisa asks Valerie to say hi to Solomon for her; she gets away with the first step of her “plan” because “Lying to adults was a little easier for Lisa than lying to her peers” (12). For some reason, Lisa’s life depends on her real plan to “fix” Solomon Reed.

Solomon is characterized as having been a shy child who liked to go under the radar at school and save his personality for home. Before the incident at the fountain, Solomon was already in therapy due to tantrums and crying fits, but “Therapy didn’t really work on Solomon because he didn’t want it to” (13). After the fountain, Solomon rejects his therapist for implying that his parents are to blame for his panic attacks, and his parents learn to help him deal with his mental and emotional struggles by letting him make his own choices for care.

The reality is that “When [Solomon] was home, he was better. He was calm and happy and easy to go along with” (14). Solomon doesn’t express any particular sadness, anger, or boredom with his situation. Instead, he enjoys the freedom of staying in his home with only his parents for companionship. Solomon maintains a friend Grant for a time, but the friendship ends shortly after Solomon begins homeschooling. Solomon is relieved to be without friends. Although his parents worry about him, “Solomon’s world wasn’t lonely like you’d think. It wasn’t dark and sad. It was small, sure, but it was comfortable” (16). Solomon wishes he could give that comfort to his parents but suspects that they have figured this out themselves.

Lisa Praytor may have perfect grades, but her life is not purely made up of successes. Her father is out of the picture and from her mother she “learned that if she settled for a life she didn’t want, then she’d end up just like her—overworked, mildly depressed, and failing miserably at a third marriage” (17). What’s more, her handsome and confident boyfriend Clark doesn’t match her desire for a bigger life outside of their hometown, nor is he interested in sex with Lisa. Lisa’s best friend Janis, a born-again Christian, suggests that Clark is gay, but Lisa shrugs her off and decides to focus on her future, not her lack of a sex life.

Lisa tells Clark that she has found her ideal university in Baltimore: Woodlawn. Woodlawn’s second-best psychology program would enable Lisa to be the top of her class, a move Clark characterizes as being “like Lady Macbeth without the murder” (20). In order to get Woodlawn’s full ride scholarship to study psychology, Lisa knows she has to write the best essay. Here, her plan with Solomon is revealed to the reader, though not to Clark or even to Janis, who knows she has been in contact with Solomon’s mother. Lisa “needed to find Solomon, charm him, and counsel him back to health. Then, she’d record it all in her essay to Woodlawn” (21-22). Her plan to use Solomon to get the scholarship for Woodlawn highlights Lisa’s ambition and her goal to live an important and exciting life.