Abigail tells Wes about a birthday card she once received when she meets him at Alabaster Manor. On the card, one snake asks another if he ate the first snake’s cupcake. The second snake says that he did not, but “he [has] a cupcake-shaped lump in the middle of his long, snakey silhouette. Undigested evidence of his betrayal” (50). After considering the snake for a bit, Wes tells Abigail that it’s possible that the snake didn’t eat the cupcake—that “he was just shaped that way” and that “He probably gets blamed for that kind of thing all the time” (53).

In this way, the snake becomes symbolic of everyone who gets judged based on appearances, whether that’s “War Crimes Wes” or the beautiful and often underestimated Abigail (20). Abigail reflects that “her classmates [assume] she [is] dating a warlord, a tyrant, [but] Abigail [sees] Wes’s sensitivity” (112). Likewise, he recognizes her intelligence and compassion. Similarly, Catherine’s early actions—pressuring her husband into an open marriage while largely ignoring her daughters—could suggest that she is merely self-absorbed rather than working her way through real emotional pain. Bud appears equally irresponsible as a parent (as well as ineffectual in general), but these apparent character traits reflect a life that feels purposeless and thankless. The symbol thus suggests that while it’s easy to judge someone based on how they appear in a moment—like the snake with the cupcake-shaped lump—the reality is typically much more complicated, and people often deserve empathy more than they deserve judgment. That a drawing of the snakes shows up on the final page of the novel highlights its significance. Each of the individuals at Harper’s birthday party could be the accused snake, metaphorically: It is easy to pass judgment on them and completely misconstrue the reality of who they actually are.