“It wasn’t the first time in my life that I had suspected we were different, that we were opposite children, but it was the first time I had heard Mom concerned about it. I tucked Mom’s comments away in my brain. I started watching you even more closely, to see how you did it.”

This passage marks a shift in Sally’s self-perception, as external validation from her mother confirms her insecurities about being different from Kathy. The quote introduces the motif of watching and being watched, positioning Sally as an observer who studies her sister to understand social performance. This act of intense observation foreshadows Sally’s role as the narrator of life after Kathy’s death, meticulously reconstructing her life from memory.

“I felt like I needed to do something drastic. Something a Red Person would never do. I walked over to the high dive. […] I looked around to see who was watching me, until I realized that nobody was watching me.”

Here, Espach illustrates Sally’s internal conflict between her cautious nature (a “Red Person”) and her desire to emulate Kathy’s perceived freedom (a “Green Person”). Her decision to act drastically is not for herself but for an imagined audience, highlighting her adolescent self-consciousness. The realization that “nobody was watching” underscores her feelings of invisibility and precipitates the fall that brings Billy into the family’s orbit, setting the main plot in motion.

“You laughed, but no, no, you can’t choose death, you said. ‘Death is no fun. Death is not an option.’”

Spoken during a game, Kathy’s words are imbued with irony, as her own death is imminent. This dialogue captures the innocence of youth, a perspective that the narrator’s hindsight reveals as false. The statement contrasts the sisters’ playful conception of mortality with the reality of the accident to come.

“Of course, walking out of Macy’s, we couldn’t imagine the way things would be different by the time the couch arrived. We couldn’t imagine that by then, you would be dead. How could we have ever imagined such a thing back then?”

This passage uses direct foreshadowing, superimposing future knowledge onto a mundane memory to illustrate how trauma reshapes past events. The scene also introduces the white couch, which acts as an emblem of a future that will never be realized throughout the narrative.

“‘This is my future, Sally,’ you said. But I was unmoved. I didn’t want to think about your future with Billy at Villanova. I wanted you to stay here, in our house, forever.”

In this moment of conflict, Sally’s motivation for withholding Kathy’s notes is revealed as a complex mix of sibling resentment and a desperate desire to halt time. Her internal monologue clarifies that her action is not simple spite but a reaction against the future that threatens to separate her from her sister. This articulation of motive establishes the foundation of Sally’s lifelong guilt over her sister’s death.

“And that was it—your very last word. That’s what I told the police. That’s what I put in the official report. It seemed important to document for some reason. It seemed like something people ought to know, how you called out for Billy even in that final moment, even as he killed you.”

Sally’s conscious decision to shape the official narrative—to “document” the meaning behind Kathy’s last word—demonstrates how storytelling becomes her method of processing trauma. This act of interpretation, attributing Kathy’s cry to unwavering love, is a key example of how memory is actively constructed to make sense of a senseless event, emphasizing The Subjectivity of Memory in Reconstructing the Past.

“But now sometimes when I am combing my hair in the mirror, when I am brushing my teeth, when I am smoothing cream on my face at night […] I close my eyes and see your teeth. They were hemorrhagic, the autopsy report documented. So bloody, it makes me feel faint.”

In this passage, Sally describes the persistence of traumatic memory. The juxtaposition of mundane, domestic actions with the graphic, clinical detail of the autopsy (“hemorrhagic”) illustrates how trauma intrudes upon everyday life. The use of visceral imagery grounds Sally’s psychological pain in a physical reality, introducing the motif of physical Wounds and scars as markers of memory.

“And in that moment, as Mom screamed and collapsed into Dad’s chest, it felt as if I had finally killed you. […] We walked through the door, back into the world, and the doctor descended into the basement, where he’d spend the beautiful day with your body.”

Sally’s internal response to her mother’s grief crystallizes her profound sense of guilt, linking her own survival to her sister’s death. The narrative uses spatial imagery—the family reentering “the world” while the doctor “descended into the basement”—to create a physical and symbolic separation between the living and the dead. This contrast emphasizes the finality of loss and the beginning of Sally’s reconstructed life in its aftermath.

“Yet they went up to the pulpit and declared you an angel, a shining star, […] and I didn’t even realize how much this all bothered me until I described it to Billy online.”

This passage highlights the conflict between public mourning and private memory. The clichéd platitudes used to eulogize Kathy conflict with Sally’s complex, personal knowledge of her sister. Sally’s ability to articulate this frustration only to Billy establishes their secret conversations as the sole space for authentic emotional processing, cementing their bond through a shared, unutterable trauma.

“But all that means now is that my ass is on my face, he wrote. Because that’s a thing. Wait, really? Yes. They put my ass on my face. Apparently, the ass is good for that kind of thing. The ass can literally be applied anywhere.”

Billy’s description of his plastic surgery uses dark humor to convey his alienation from his own body and identity. The statement exemplifies the motif of physical wounds and scars, demonstrating how trauma literally remakes a person, leaving them feeling like a collection of mismatched parts. This gallows humor also functions as a coping mechanism and a marker of the unique intimacy between Billy and Sally, who can share such vulnerable details.

“So I said, ‘Kathy?’ Just once, into the darkness. It was all I could bear. ‘Are you there?’ Of course, you weren’t there. […] I stood on your bed, and I took your name off the ceiling, ripped off each star one by one, and stripped some of the paint.”

The act of removing Kathy’s name from the ceiling is a symbolic gesture representing Sally’s attempt to separate her identity from the overwhelming specter of her sister’s memory. The action illustrates the evolution of sibling bonds after loss, shifting from a shared existence to a private memory.

“We met on the white couch. There, Dad was mad. He was Mad Dad. I don’t think you know this man. I didn’t meet him until you died. This father yelled, so loudly, it was like his voice was coming from the center of the earth.”

The confrontation takes place on The White Couch—once a symbol of the family’s aspirations, now redefined by anger and grief. The narrator’s personification of her father’s anger as a separate identity (“Mad Dad”) illustrates how trauma alters personalities and family dynamics. The simile comparing his voice to something from the “center of the earth” emphasizes the primal, destructive force of his grief.

“He put his hand over mine. This was the first of many. The first time I ever broke the law. The first time Billy had ever touched my hand. I breathed my first deep breath of the afternoon. Of maybe my entire life.”

This moment uses physical touch to signal the shift of Sally and Billy’s bond from the virtual to the tangible. The hyperbole in “Of maybe my entire life” conveys the sense of liberation Sally experiences, linking their shared transgression to a feeling of authentic selfhood. Their joint operation of the ride symbolizes them taking control of their lives, foreshadowing their deepening relationship.

“Most days, walking down the halls at school, I felt like a boat. Like everything inside the boat was real and everything outside of it was a mirage. […] The walls were thick, built to keep out an entire ocean.”

Espach’s extended metaphor captures Sally’s emotional isolation. By portraying herself as a self-contained vessel, she illustrates the divide between her internal reality of grief and the external world. The “ocean” represents the overwhelming force of memory, continuing the novel’s water motif and illustrating the psychological defenses Sally constructs to survive her loss.

“If a man cannot say, Will you have sex with me… he is probably just a boy, and he will probably stay a boy, wearing stripes, forever—that’s what you would have said, isn’t it? Or maybe this is something Jillian Williams would have said. Either way, it made me want to leave.”

This internal monologue reveals how Sally’s memory of Kathy constantly shifts and evolves across the narrative. The blending of Kathy’s imagined voice with that of a television host highlights the theme of The Subjectivity of Memory in Reconstructing the Past, suggesting Sally’s internal image of her sister is a composite of authentic recollection and external cultural scripts.

“[…] all of it was sitting on your desk, covered in a layer of dust so thick, it reminded me of the awful pictures Mr. Prim showed us of Pompeii, the layers of volcanic ash and dust that fell on everything […] and hardened into a shell.”

Using a simile, Sally equates the state of Kathy’s belongings with the ruins of Pompeii. The comparison frames the family’s grief as a catastrophic event that froze time, encasing the past in a suffocating layer of memory. Sally’s decision to clean the room is a symbolic act representing her attempt to break free from the static quality of her grief.

“But pretending to be normal in front of Billy suddenly seemed like a giant waste of time. I was tired of lying. There’s no point in lying. The truth always rises, like a bloated body in the water.”

Espach uses visceral imagery to emphasize Sally and Billy’s intimacy as a unique relationship in both of their lives—one rooted in The Intersection of Love, Guilt, and Shared Trauma. The simile comparing truth to a drowned body suggests their honesty is an inevitability forced to the surface by their past.

“‘Of course I can’t be your boyfriend. I killed your sister.’ ‘You did not kill my sister,’ I said. ‘I literally drove my car into a tree and she died,’ he said. ‘If I didn’t kill her, then who did?’”

This dialogue exposes the central conflict in Sally and Billy’s relationship—reconciling their love for each other with its roots in their shared pain and guilt. Here, Billy reduces their history to a statement of cause and effect to emphasize the challenges of a meaningful romantic relationship between them. His final question functions as a rhetorical trap, framing his guilt as an absolute fact that precludes a future for them.

“I was like a geologist who studied Mom’s body for many years; from a distance, the landscape looked still and calm. A lovely day out. But I could see the earthquake begin in her shoulder, the slow curve of her back. When she turned around, her mouth cracked and her face crumbled. And then, of course, the flood.”

Sally employs an extended metaphor to describe her mother’s suppressed grief. The language of geology—“landscape,” “earthquake,” “flood”—transforms her mother’s physical form into a site of unseen tectonic stress, revealing the deep trauma hidden beneath a calm surface. This imagery connects to the novel’s water motif and underscores Sally’s role as a close, analytical observer of her family’s pain.

“I wanted Ray to look at me like a flower, in a vase, cut from its roots. So, instead, I talked a lot about my job at ABC News, which had once been very exciting to me but was starting to lose its luster.”

This simile reveals Sally’s desire to be seen as separate from the trauma of her past. The image of a flower “cut from its roots” expresses her wish for an identity unburdened by grief and family history. This desire explains her attraction to Ray, who represents a new life, and her inability to be fully honest with him.

“He had been so convinced that the only solution was to run away—to give up his home, his life, his body—to say, God, do what you will. ‘But it wasn’t,’ he said. The solution was always the opposite of what we expected it to be. The solution was to stay here, to plant a rosebush in the middle of Main Street.”

In this moment of reflection, Billy articulates a significant shift in his understanding of atonement. He contrasts his initial impulse to escape with the healing he found in nurturing life, symbolizing a move away from self-punishment and toward active, generative care. Billy’s arc suggests that confronting the past, rather than running from it, is the true path to healing.

“Billy is so close to me and the desire is strong, a giant wave pulling me out to sea always, but I won’t. I won’t stand there, with your boyfriend, and act like he is mine. As if the joke is ours.”

The metaphor of the wave invokes the water motif to describe Sally’s desire for Billy as an overwhelming force. This internal conflict exposes her loyalty to her sister, as she views a relationship with Billy as a betrayal. The passage captures the intersection of love, guilt, and shared trauma that defines Sally and Billy’s connection.

“There is a dark hole inside of me, where you used to be; it’s the space where I live now. It’s soundless and windless and without gravity, and from here, I can see everything. From here, I look back out at the world, at all the regular people, like Ray, living their life so easily.

This passage uses a spatial metaphor to articulate the nature of Sally’s grief, defining it as a fundamental alteration of her being. The “dark hole” is the void left by Kathy, which has become the narrator’s new vantage point. This imagery explains her sense of alienation from others, like Ray, whose uncomplicated existence seems foreign to her.