51 pages • 1-hour read
Jake, Reinvented
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Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
It turns out that Jake was formerly Didi’s math tutor when he went to a different school. Didi tells Jake that he looks “awesome” and complements his great party. Jake takes Didi and Jennifer to look at a pet snake that someone brought to the party, and Todd is relieved that he got away with his lie. Some other football players throw Todd up on their shoulders, and Rick thinks of him as a king of a royal court.
Having left Jake to give Didi a tour of the house, Jennifer comes back over to Rick and invites him to dance. She has just gone through a breakup and adopted a new personal mantra: “It’s all about me” (39). Rick and Jennifer debate how Jake pays for the parties, and Rick suspects that it may have something to do with the envelopes from Atlantica University.
The party lasts until after three in the morning. Todd and Melissa hook up again. Rick sees Jennifer kissing a player on the basketball team, whom she later claims not to like. Rick and Jennifer comment that Jake and Didi spent the entire night hanging out together. The football players steal Dipsy’s pants again. As everyone departs the party, Rick offers to help Jake clean up the mess, but Jake says that he has it covered. Rick spots Mrs. Appleford scowling at the departing guests from her bedroom window.
Chapter 5 Summary
Tired from the party the night before, Rick doesn’t get started on his usual Saturday run until around noon. As he jogs by Jake’s house, Rick spots Jake cleaning up the huge mess from the party by himself. After Rick comes inside, Jake tells him that he just found out that his father is coming home from a work trip and will be there in an hour. Rick immediately grabs a garbage bag and scrambles with Jake to clean the house before Jake’s father arrives.
As he cleans upstairs, Rick peeks into Jake’s bedroom and is surprised at how normal it appears. He would have expected someone as cool and mysterious as Jake to have a more interesting bedroom. Rick discovers a chess trophy inside one of Jake’s drawers, as well as a college essay for someone named Nancy Outerbridge.
Panicking as Jake’s father approaches, Rick and Jake continue to clean, only to discover Dipsy asleep on Jake’s basement couch, still pants-less from the previous night’s party. Mr. Garrett enters the house tired from his work travel and seems to believe Jake’s lie that he caused the mess by doing some housecleaning.
As Mr. Garrett heads off to nap, Rick tells Dipsy that he shouldn’t let the football team pick on him so much. Dipsy says that he had a good time at the party and that he is a “remora” biding its time on the coral reef. Rick doesn’t understand but remembers a time when Dipsy helped him out during sophomore year, so he continues to treat Dipsy with respect.
Jake thanks Rick for helping him clean and offers to take him to a fancy steakhouse for lunch the next day as a token of his appreciation. Rick is amazed that Jake has access to one of the best restaurants in town. Rick suggests that Jake cool it on the weekly parties after the close call with his dad, but Jake says that he won’t be stopping anytime soon.
Chapter 6 Summary
After going to the steakhouse with Jake, Rick returns home to find an email from Jennifer asking to meet up. Her email jokes about them having sex and Rick continues to wrestle with his romantic feelings for his childhood friend–feelings that she appears not to share.
Rick recalls a time in sophomore year when he got up the courage to ask Jennifer on a date. On that date, they went apple picking, where they ran into Todd and some other classmates. Rick appreciated Todd for helping keep the conversation rolling and keeping Jennifer laughing. However, soon, Jennifer and Todd started gravitating toward each other, and eventually they took off together, abandoning Rick. Rick was devastated, but Dipsy helped him to cover up his shame by going apple picking with him. Rick thinks that he’ll never forget the support Dipsy gave him during that difficult time. Jennifer and Todd’s relationship soon ended, and Rick and Jennifer haven’t spoken about that day since.
These events are on Rick’s mind as he meets Jennifer at a coffee shop, where she wants to discuss Jake. Apparently Didi, who usually tells Jennifer everything, doesn’t want to talk about her relationship with Jake. Jennifer has discovered that Jake asked out Didi when he was her math tutor, but she turned him down because he wasn’t popular enough. Jennifer is sure that Jake is still “gaga” over Didi and had Rick invite Jennifer to his party to get Didi to come along as well.
Chapter 7 Summary
After Mrs. Appleford tips her off, Rick’s mother confronts Rick about his participation in Jake’s wild parties. Rick gets out of trouble by saying that he was only at the parties because the entire football team was invited. Rick’s mom works in real estate and sold Jake and his father the house in which they currently live. She tells Rick that Jake insisted that his father buy a home close to the all-girls school that Didi and Jennifer attend.
Didi comes to visit Rick at his house, and Rick is surprised that she didn’t bring Jennifer, Todd, or anyone else with her. Didi and Rick have never spent time alone before. Didi asks Rick to come to the mall with her to pick out a birthday gift for Jennifer, but Rick suspects that she has a hidden agenda, since Jennifer’s birthday isn’t for months.
As she drives Rick towards the mall, Didi abruptly stops in front of Jake’s house. She suggests that they thank Jake for the great party last Friday. Jake is stunned when he opens the door and sees Didi. Rick recognizes that there is something big between them. Didi invites Jake to come with her and Rick to the mall and Jake drives the three of them there in the BMW.
At the mall, Didi and Jake completely ignore Rick, leaving him to shop for Jennifer while they go off by themselves. They are gone for over an hour and Rick later spots a ticket stub in Jake’s wallet that suggests that they went to a movie. Rick fumes about having to wait around for them for so long.
On the way home, Jake goes out of the way to drop Rick off first, before heading back to his house with Didi. Suspicious, Rick walks over to Jake’s house hours later and sees that Didi’s car is still parked in Jake’s driveway.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
While Rick’s relationship to most of his peers is straightforward—for example, he is Todd’s, and later Jake’s, sidekick—his relationship to Jennifer is more complex. Having grown up together, Rick and Jennifer are friends, but each appears to harbor romantic feelings for the other. Rick can’t tell if Jennifer’s flirtations are serious or ironic, which complicates his own feelings for her. Jennifer’s motto, “[i]t’s all about me” (40), succinctly captures the selfish tendencies of High School Hedonism. Her pleasure-seeking behavior suggests that real love may not be possible because everyone is so caught up with themselves to care about others. Her interactions with Rick give the novel a pessimistic tone.
Rick and Jake begin to form a closer bond during this section, especially when Rick helps Jake clean up his house the day after the party. However, they view their friendship differently. Whereas Rick demonstrates his friendship by helping Jake clean, Jake can’t break away from a materialistic perspective. When he offers to take Rick to a steakhouse, Jake reveals his cynical belief that people only do things for their own benefit, rather than out of a sense of moral goodness. The steakhouse, an expensive establishment designed for eating meat, represents the consumerism that Korman critiques throughout the text, as characters frequently value things that are material or vapid.
Previously the novel highlighted the positive aspects of Jake’s parties, but it now begins slipping in hints about the negative consequences of the partygoers’ hedonistic conduct. Rick’s hangover prevents him from getting his needed exercise, while the enormous mess from the party shows that there are real costs from such wild behavior. The fact that no one except Rick comes to help Jake clean foreshadows that the high schoolers will later show a similar lack of accountability during Jake’s climactic downfall.
Dipsy’s disheveled and pants-less appearance on Jake’s couch contrasts sharply with Rick’s positive memory of him during the apple picking date, reinforcing the theme of Appearance Versus Substance. On the surface, Dipsy appears to be a strange misfit with little to offer. When Jennifer abandoned Rick during their date, however, Dipsy displayed unexpected empathy and kindness, helping Rick get through his ordeal without embarrassment. His messy outer appearance masks an inner strength, suggesting that there is no connection between external and internal value. Dipsy’s metaphor of himself as the “remora” fish that cling to larger animals such as whales or sharks and feed off their excrement without hurting them, reinforces the idea that he has hidden depths not easily spotted by his superficial peers and that he is currently just along for the ride.
As this section progresses, Rick begins to glimpse Jake’s version of The American Dream. From inspecting his room, Rick discovers that Jake is very intelligent—even nerdy—but hides that intelligence behind his mysterious cool-guy persona. After consulting with Jennifer, Rick learns that Jake dreams of winning Didi’s heart by any means necessary. Rick’s mother’s comment about the location of Jake’s house demonstrates the extreme measures that Jake will take to make his dream a reality. Jake’s desires to reinvent himself as cool represent the neoliberal idea of self-responsibility and hard work to raise one’s own socio-economic status.
Didi’s initial unwillingness to be with Jake when he was her math tutor indicates that she cares deeply about social status and popularity, reinforcing the importance of class hierarchy amid high school culture. She appears to care more about how her relationships make her look than about her actual feelings for the boys involved. Her relationship with the star quarterback Todd makes her look good, which means more than their actual compatibility in a high school society obsessed with appearances. Didi maintains her focus on appearances during her date at the mall with Jake, another locus of consumerism in this section. She tricks Rick into coming along as social cover, and the fact that neither Jake nor Didi care about Rick’s negative experience as their unwilling tagalong underlines their shared selfishness.
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