57 pages • 1-hour read
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Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, death by suicide, substance use, graphic violence, cursing, illness, and death.
The next morning, Jet wakes up at 11:00 am to the sound of people in the dining room. When she goes downstairs, she finds her parents, Sophia, Luke, and the baby at the breakfast table. She is annoyed because no one woke her up, and she didn’t have her phone to set an alarm. She can also tell that her mother is being overly cheerful.
Jet joins her family and asks Sophia why she came to the house twice on the day of her attack. Sophia hesitates, then tells her that she forgot her phone the first time. Jet then asks Luke about cuts on his hands, but he insists that he fell at work on Friday. She questions them both about where they were when she was attacked, and they respond that they were home together.
Dianne interrupts, telling Jet that the point of the breakfast is to ask her one final time to have the surgery. Dr. Lee told Dianne that once the aneurysm forms, it will be too late. Jet grows angry, telling her mother that she has already made her choice. In response, Dianne throws two funeral home pamphlets down in front of her and leaves the dining room.
Jet tells her father that she can no longer live with them because of how Dianne is acting. She goes to her room and packs her bags while her father tries to convince her to stay. On her way out the door, she picks up two newly arrived letters addressed to her.
Realizing she has nowhere else to go, Jet drives to Billy’s apartment and knocks on the door.
As Jet looks at a map of River Street, Billy cleans around her. She keeps telling him that he doesn’t have to worry about her being there, but he continues to clean. He asks Jet what she knows, and she tells him about the information from her watch.
When her iPad is about to die, Billy grabs her charger. He sees the two envelopes in her bag, reminding Jet about them. The first piece of mail is a sympathy card. The second is a notice from a bank. It warns Jet that she is close to defaulting on her $30,000 loan, and they will seize her truck if she doesn’t pay. Jet insists that the loan is not hers—even though it does list her truck as collateral.
Billy suggests that Jet share the information with the police. Jet is skeptical but realizes it could be connected to her murder. As she starts to leave, she tells Billy goodbye. They have an awkward moment where Billy offers to join her, but Jet tells him she will be fine alone.
Sitting in the room with Detective Ecker and Jack, Jet can feel a pain growing behind her eyes and wonders if it is the aneurysm. She can also see the seconds on the clock ticking.
Ecker finishes reading the letter from the loan company. He promises her that he will call them and figure out whose bank account the money went into. He tells her that they went to River Street and searched the area, but no one they interviewed had any information.
When Ecker leaves, Jet asks Jack if he can tell her anything else. He hesitates, then pulls out a folder. He shows her a picture of a hair that was found at the crime scene. It was under Jet’s blood, implying it was there before or during the attack. Jet sees that it is red, but she can’t think of anyone with red hair.
Jet asks about DNA, but Jack reveals that the hair is synthetic. He asks if she knows anyone who was wearing a red wig on Halloween. Jet hesitates before admitting that JJ had a red wig on. She begins to wonder if he truly could have hurt her.
After leaving the police station, Jet goes and buys fried food. She hasn’t had it in years because of her kidneys and blood pressure. She then drives to River Street, driving by slowly several times to look at the houses.
Jet decides to get out of her car and walk, noting the location where her phone disappeared. She walks by the cemetery, remembering that her sister, Emily, is buried there. She wonders where her body will end up. When she hears rustling nearby in the trees, she realizes that she is no longer afraid.
Back at Billy’s house, he is waiting up for her. He expresses his concern about the fact that she was out until almost 11:00 pm. However, she jokes about it, insisting that she is fine.
Jet updates Billy on what the police told her. When she mentions the red hair, Billy tells her that Andrew had a red wig on, too. She decides that she needs to talk to Owen Clay, a boy who was taking official photos of the costumes at the Fair. This time, she invites Billy to go with her.
Jet and Billy go to Owen’s house, and his father, Gerry, greets them at the door. He is kind, but Jet is short and dismissive of him. She brushes past him into the house, insisting that they need to talk to his son.
Gerry takes them out into the backyard, where Owen is flying a drone. He introduces the boy to Jet and Billy. Gerry then goes to work, and Owen takes them up to his bedroom.
Owen opens up the photos on his computer. He is hesitant to leave them with it, but Jet is rude to him. Billy reprimands her, but Jet dismisses him.
Jet and Billy flip through hundreds of photos. They find one of JJ, confirming that he was wearing a red wig. They then find one of Andrew, who is wearing the exact same wig. They realize that one of the men is likely Jet’s attacker.
Jet stops on a photo of Luke. Billy asks Jet what happened to her friendship with Sophia, but Jet insists that Sophia pulled away from her. She realizes that Luke’s knuckles are not scraped in the photograph, which means he lied about falling at work on Halloween morning. Billy can’t believe that Luke would attack her, but Jet points out that he already lied to her easily, so he could be lying about being at home during her attack.
Jet and Billy find Andrew at the bar where Billy works. Andrew lives upstairs, and, even though the bar just opened, he is already drinking.
Jet drags a chair up to Andrew’s table, ignoring his protests. He seems surprised to see her bandages. She tells him about being attacked but omits the fact that she is going to die. Andrew insists that Jack took him home, and he didn’t leave his house again that night.
Jet asks Andrew why he dislikes her family. She points out that her sister, Emily, and Andrew’s daughter, Nina, used to be best friends. However, Emily died when they were 16, and, shortly thereafter, Nina died by suicide.
Andrew says that he blames Dianne for Nina’s death. She used her influence to get Nina fired from her job at the hotel. Two days later, Nina died. Additionally, Luke paid Andrew an exorbitant amount of money for his home, then knocked it down along with several homes around it. Now, it is part of a complex that Andrew assumes will be turned into a mansion.
Out of spite, Andrew tells Jet that Luke will never inherit his father’s company—Chief Jankowski’s wife, Nell, is going to buy it to expand her own company. He expresses his delight over how upset Luke will be when he finds out. The information is new to Jet, but she admits to herself that it doesn’t really surprise her.
Andrew refuses to tell them anything more, and Jet and Billy get up to leave. She thinks of how she doesn’t trust Andrew, who has a lot of anger toward her family. To Billy, she suggests going upstairs and breaking into Andrew’s apartment to check for her phone. However, Billy points out that the bar is nowhere near River Street.
Jet returns to the table and asks Andrew if he knows anyone on River Street. He points out that Jet’s family used to be his neighbors. He lived on North Street, which branches off; now, it is the site of Jet’s family’s newest construction project. Jet realizes that her phone disappeared at the bottom of North Street, so it’s possible she was looking at the wrong street all along.
Jet and Billy go to the construction site on North Street. Billy explains that it is entirely Luke’s project; he is using it to prove that he is capable of taking over the business. They look around until the foreman, Jimmy, confronts them. Jet explains that she is Luke’s sister and pretends to be checking the site to ensure that they are following protocol.
Jet asks about site security, and Jimmy tells her that they have a gate, but a fence is unnecessary, as North Street is a dead end. There are no cameras. She asks about their progress, and Jimmy shows her where they poured concrete for the garage on Saturday morning.
Jet pulls Billy aside. She speculates that her phone and the murder weapon could be buried under the concrete. Billy hesitates, but Jet grabs a sledgehammer. She walks out onto the concrete and smashes part of it with the sledgehammer. Billy holds Jimmy back until he angrily leaves to call Luke. After watching Jet for several moments, Billy decides to join her.
Just as Jet hears police sirens, Luke arrives. He yells at Jet, but she ignores him and continues to hammer. When she breaks through to the soil beneath, she digs in the dirt. She finds a dish towel that she recognizes from the house. Inside is her cell phone and a hammer.
Ecker arrives at the site and scolds Jet for getting involved in the investigation. She yells at him for not working fast enough. She mentions the red hair, but Ecker points out that it could’ve been transferred from anyone—it didn’t necessarily have to be Andrew or JJ.
Jet’s family arrives and interrupts their conversation. Dianne tries to convince Jet to come home, but Jet ignores her. Instead, she asks her dad and Luke to get her the names and phone numbers of people working on the site.
Later that night, Jet looks up information on the hammer. She learns that it is only sold as part of a set, so someone would have the rest of the tools. She plans to talk to the workers from the site once she gets the list from Luke, but she still thinks that Andrew is her attacker.
Later, Billy tells Jet that he is playing his guitar and singing at the bar that night. He offers to stay home, but Jet insists that he go. When he invites her, she is hesitant because she does not want to feel embarrassed if he is bad. However, she feels guilty and agrees.
To Jet’s surprise, Billy is very good. He sings several famous songs, then one of his own about a girl that he loves.
While Billy sings, Jet spots Nell at the bar. She asks her about her father’s company. Nell is bothered that Andrew told her, but she admits that Jet’s father is planning on selling it to her.
When Billy finishes singing, he joins Jet at her table. She questions him about why he doesn’t pursue singing full-time. Billy insists that it is just a hobby, but Jet tries to get him to understand that he is lucky to find something that he loves doing.
Billy and Jet talk about her sister, Emily, who drowned in their family pool when she was 16 and Jet was 10. Jet admits that her mother always blamed Jet for Emily’s death because they were away at a spelling bee with Jet when Emily died. Billy tries to argue with her, but Jet insists that it is true.
Jet changes the subject by asking Billy who he wrote the song about. She guesses that it is Allison, one of his coworkers. Billy claims that it isn’t about anyone in particular, but Jet doesn’t believe him.
In this section of the text, Jet begins to investigate her murder, which is quickly revealed to be connected to her family and their relationship with other Woodstock residents. Ironically, her conversation with Andrew, one of the primary suspects in her attack, offers Jet her first insight into Mason Construction’s activities and conflict with the town. First, it shows her the people whom her family preys on, as Andrew reveals how his life was disrupted by the Mason family, starting with the sale of his home to Luke. The conversation also uncovers details about her sister Emily’s death, as well as the death of Andrew’s daughter, Nina, both of which occurred when Jet was young. This conversation introduces the theme of Reconciling with the Past as Jet is forced to reevaluate what she thought she knew about her family and their company. This scene marks the beginning of Jet’s investigation into her own family as the mystery of who murdered her becomes more complicated, connected to other past mysteries.
When Jet digs into the concrete of the construction site, her actions become a metaphor for her digging into the secrets of her attack and her family. She ignores the protests of her brother and her mother, instead using brute force to uncover her phone and the murder weapon. Similarly, she breaks free from her family, separating herself physically so that she can get a better understanding of what they’ve done in the past, using brute force when necessary to get the answers she seeks. Jet’s decision to move in with Billy offers another metaphorical moment as she distances herself from her family both physically and figuratively, seeking greater objectivity and denying her family the chance to influence her.
The moment at the construction site marks a key shift in the characters of both Jet and Billy during their investigation. Thus far, Jet has toed the line between right and wrong, using a disrespectful and brash approach to force information that she wants out of people without descending into any morally questionable actions. However, in this section, her sense of urgency causes her to set her morality aside, beginning the novel’s exploration of The Connection Between Privilege and Corruption. The moment that she grabs the hammer and begins destroying the construction site, she crosses the line into actions that are dangerous and illegal, using her privilege (both her family’s power and her lack of consequences) to do so. Billy’s hesitancy to join her emphasizes this transition; while Jet has little to fear because of her impending death, for Billy, their actions still have consequences. His uncertainty also highlights his role thus far in the narrative as a moral anchor and source of conscience for Jet. When he grabs the hammer and joins Jet, his actions emphasize his willingness to also descend into moral ambiguity to help her.
Jet’s actions at the construction site also introduce the motif of no consequences, a recurring idea that highlights her willingness to use whatever means necessary to get the answers that she wants. As Billy hesitates, Jet explains, “You still have to think about consequences. But I don’t. It’s okay” (126). This moment highlights both her immaturity and her recklessness—in her mind, the only consequences for shattering the concrete foundation are tied to punishment. She reasons that because she is dying, she has no fear of these consequences, allowing her the freedom to do whatever she wants in her investigation. This idea will recur throughout the novel as Jet learns to understand the layers and complexities of consequences, highlighting her growth and development in the text.
After Billy becomes fully committed to helping Jet, despite the consequences involved, Jackson hints at the romantic feelings that exist between the characters. When Jet sees Billy singing in the bar, she notes that his original song is about unrequited love. She is ignorant of who the song is about, but Billy’s awkwardness and discomfort when she asks him implies that the song is about Jet. This moment further highlights Jet’s journey to understanding The Value of Living in the Present. For the first time since she was attacked, Jet takes a break from the investigation, spending time watching Billy sing and enjoying her time in the bar. When she asks Billy why she didn’t know about his musical ability sooner, he responds that he’s “invited [her] like fifty times” (145). This revelation emphasizes Jet’s disconnection from her present life in Woodstock. Jet’s repeated insistence that Billy should pursue singing as a career highlights the difference between these two characters: Billy finds happiness in the act of singing for fun, while Jet struggles to see the value in something that doesn’t lead to money or fame. Billy is also just enjoying the moment, the present, while Jet continues to be focused on the future, even when it comes to Billy’s guitar playing.



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