Nightshade

After Leigh-Anne Moss’s death, her corpse is identified by her distinctive streak of purple hair in the color “nightshade.” Stilwell and those closest to Moss disagree about the significance of the dye, which is named after a family of poisonous purple flowers and is the source of the novel’s title. The debate about the name symbolizes the impossibility of knowing the truth about other people. For Moss’s lover Daniel Easterbrook, the hair dye reflects Moss’s wild, untamable beauty. He describes her as “a wildflower” and connects the name of the dye with the Catalina nightshade (264), a native wildflower that grows across the island. He also interprets the purple streak as evidence of their intimacy, saying that she put the streak in as “a signal to [him] when [they] were in the club but had to keep [their] relationship […] on the down-low” (264). As a result, Nightshade became “[his] pet name for her” when he could not use her real name (164). Throughout their relationship and after her death, Easterbrook interprets Moss’s purple streak as a reflection of her beauty and a sign of her devotion to him.

For others, such as Stilwell and Moss’s former roommate, Leslie Sneed, the reference to deadly nightshade in the dye’s name is a reflection of Moss’s “dangerous” personality (195).