50 pages • 1-hour read
Penpal
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Maps”
The novel flashes back to when the narrator and his mother lived in their neighborhood, which the narrator theorizes was originally built around the lake, gradually expanding to connect new residents to the town. Among the first lake houses, the narrator’s favorite is the colonial-style house of Mrs. Maggie. A warm elderly woman, she welcomes conversations with the narrator and Josh every time they swim in the lake. She frequently invites them to her house for snacks, though the boys decline her invitation for reasons related to previous encounters with her.
Around the time of the Balloon Project’s conclusion, the narrator and Josh ponder how far a bottled message might go if they threw it into the lake. Mrs. Maggie overhears their conversation, and when the narrator mentions the Balloon Project to her, she brings up her husband, Tom, who is a pilot. She promises to tell Tom about the Balloon Project when he returns. The narrator notes that Mrs. Maggie said the exact same thing months earlier.
He first met Mrs. Maggie around the time his mother started allowing him to take the bus home from school. His walk home from the bus stop passed her house, and she kept referring to him as “Chris.” This isn’t his name, so he was confused. She nearly took him into her home until his mother rescued him. His mother later explained that Mrs. Maggie was “nice” but “sick.” She urged him to come straight home from the bus stop.
After the narrator has his arm cast removed, he regularly goes swimming with Josh. One afternoon, Mrs. Maggie throws something into the water for them. They swim to it and find that it’s a pool float designed to resemble a shark. They play with the float and thank Mrs. Maggie after they get out. She again refers to the narrator as “Chris” and calls Josh “John,” which they joke about after they return to the narrator’s house. This upsets the narrator’s mother, who urges them never to make fun of Mrs. Maggie again. In addition, she reiterates her instruction to decline Mrs. Maggie’s invitations to enter her house.
The narrator learns that Mrs. Maggie has Alzheimer’s disease and that Tom died long ago. He was indeed a commercial jetliner pilot who aspired to travel with Mrs. Maggie after he retired. When Mrs. Maggie developed Alzheimer’s, Tom organized a surprise trip for her. Shortly before they were scheduled to leave, however, Tom died of a heart attack while jogging near the narrator’s house. This explains why Mrs. Maggie isn’t aware of his death. Chris and John are their sons; neither ever visits their mother, though they pay her bills. The truth about Mrs. Maggie saddens the narrator.
Josh and the narrator theorize that the lake extends to a creek near Josh’s house. They chart out their explorations of the area to confirm their theory, drawing separate maps that set the lake and the creek as starting points. During one excursion, the narrator discovers a new construction site, which he surmises will eventually become a house like his own. He takes wooden spikes from the site to use as markers for their expedition. Their intention is to connect the trail of spikes from the creek to the lake. This strategy hits an obstacle when they reach an impasse in the woods.
At home, the narrator discovers his image in the photos from his pen pal. After calling the police to investigate the photos, his mother forbids him from leaving the house whenever he’s home. This brings the narrator’s snow cone business with Josh to an end and renews their interest in the map project, though Josh fails to make any significant progress without the narrator’s help. The narrator’s mother eventually relaxes her restrictions but cautions the narrator to respect her rules. This, too, makes it challenging to complete their map project since they move too slow on their feet to make any progress without spending significant time in the woods. They thus decide to sail down the tributary, using scrap construction material abandoned in The Ditch to build a raft.
Josh and the narrator launch their raft near Mrs. Maggie’s house. They make greater strides in their expeditions but must make several more trips to connect the two maps. They continue their sailing trips through first grade but coordinating them is difficult since various family circumstances prevent them from seeing each other as often as they used to. By winter that year, they finally reach the thick woodland impasse and sail around it to chart its shape and size. The impasse still proves too thick, so the boys consider an alternative plan to map it further. The plan involves Josh swimming out through the blockade on the shark float. The narrator hides the shark float and a towel in the woods to execute their new plan. However, when he and Josh go to the woods, the shark float is missing.
Several nights later, a coworker of the narrator’s mother named Samantha visits the house and notices a resemblance between the narrator and Josh. Samantha tells the narrator’s mother she’s needed at their workplace. She initially plans to take the boys along, but her car has a flat tire, and Samantha’s car has no back seat. Upset, the narrator’s mother must leave the boys behind. This gives the boys an opportunity to sneak into the woods and complete their expedition.
They rush down the tributary on their raft but hear a rustling sound in the woods nearby. The boys call out, “Hello,” but initially receive no reply. They tease each other about the greeting until they hear someone return the greeting from the woods. The narrator lights several Roman candles to illuminate the darkened woods but sees no one. They hear the rustling sound moving forward, so they paddle down the tributary to intercept its source. The raft splits in two, half-submerging them. The narrator loses his map in the water.
The narrator leads Josh to shore, though neither of them knows where they are. As they traverse this unfamiliar part of the woods, they hear someone pursuing them, which sends them running. They eventually discover that it’s a deer, which Josh scares away.
The boys continue to navigate the unknown woods, crossing the tributary again at one point. They find the spot where they left their dry clothes. The narrator’s shirt is missing. He sends Josh back home ahead to give his mom an alibi. On his way back, the narrator encounters Mrs. Maggie, who again thinks he’s Chris. Freezing without his shirt, the narrator asks if he can go into her house and borrow a towel. Mrs. Maggie denies him entry, explaining, “Mom’s home!” This makes the narrator think that his mother has returned, but when Josh confirms that she hasn’t arrived yet, he supposes that he’s out of trouble.
Later, the narrator finds his lost map in the pocket of his shorts. The illustration now includes the drawing of two stick figures without faces, as well as a number—either 15 or 16. Josh denies having put it in his pocket. This worries the narrator since his initials are written next to the smaller stick figure.
That night is the last time the narrator ever encounters Mrs. Maggie. Sometime later, a group of men wearing biohazard suits carry black bags out of her now-condemned house, each smelling of decay. Only later does the narrator realize that Mrs. Maggie told him that “Tom,” not “Mom,” was home.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Screens”
In the lead-up to his first day of first grade, the narrator experiences stomach flu, pinkeye, and a kink in his neck. Josh and the narrator hardly see each other at school after they’re sorted into different learning groups and class schedules. The only time they get to see each other is on the weekends, when they go to map the tributary. The narrator doesn’t make any other friends as close as Josh. Instead, the narrator regularly gets bullied.
A large boy named Alex starts sitting with the narrator at lunch but never finds the courage to talk to him. When the narrator confronts him, he learns that Alex has a crush on Josh’s sister, Veronica, and is hopes that the narrator can get her to like him. Grateful for Alex’s company, the narrator appeals to Josh, but Josh just makes fun of Alex. Josh is annoyed that people find his sister pretty. Secretly, the narrator thinks so too.
Years later, the narrator is a 14-year-old high school freshman enrolled in a special magnet program. He hopes that Josh might attend the same program so that they can be classmates again, but the chances are slim, and the narrator ultimately doesn’t see Josh at school again. Instead, he reacquaints himself with another old classmate from kindergarten named Chris, whose friend group he joins. They regularly watch movies at a poorly maintained cinema they call The Dirt Theatre. The narrator is fond of the venue because of its cult movie programming.
One night at a movie screening, the narrator is surprised to bump into Veronica, to whom he’s instantly attracted. He talks to her, and after hitting it off, they agree to meet at a future screening. As the night of the screening approaches, the narrator’s friends drop out of the plan, so the narrator reluctantly asks his mother if she can take him to the theater instead. She’s initially excited when she learns that he might meet a girl there. When he reveals it’s Veronica, however, his mother suddenly changes her mind.
As a last resort, he tries to call the number to Josh’s house to see if Veronica might pick him up. He’s nervous about talking to Josh since they haven’t spoken since the narrator was 12. He gets the wrong number, and suspects that Josh’s family changed their phone number since he last spoke to Josh. Feeling guilty about leaving their friendship to fall apart, the narrator resolves to use a potential relationship with Veronica to rekindle his friendship with Josh. He convinces his mother to drop him off at Chris’s house and then walks the rest of the way to the theater.
On a dark road, the narrator notices a car following him. It eventually passes him, but the narrator can’t make out the driver’s face. He sees a large crack in the car’s back window. The narrator buys seats for himself and Veronica from a sweaty ticket seller. Veronica soon arrives, and they enjoy the movie. They walk to the parking lot afterward, where the narrator once again sees the car that was trailing him. He distracts himself by playfully telling Veronica a scary story about an abandoned mall nearby, rumored to be haunted by a monster that entered from a floor grate leading underground. He then reassures himself that the car was going to the mall, and the driver must work there. The car later disappears.
The narrator and Veronica exchange phone numbers. He tries to leave her a voicemail, but she explains that her phone is set to keep ringing instead of taking voicemail. He asks about Josh, but Veronica won’t talk about him. Before the narrator and Veronica leave the theater, he goes behind the building to urinate. Hearing the sound of a car engine getting louder and then a crash, he runs back to the parking lot, where Veronica barely survived being hit by the car. He calls an ambulance. She tells him that the person who hit her took her picture.
At the hospital, the narrator declines an incoming call on Veronica’s phone. Early in the morning, he calls his mother from the hospital phone. While waiting for her to arrive, he tells the police what he knows about the car that hit Veronica. His mother arrives, upset with her son for lying to her. The narrator considers telling her the truth about Boxes, the raft, and everything else that happened to him as a child. In retrospect, he feels that it would have profoundly impacted their dynamic. Veronica’s parents arrive, and the narrator returns Veronica’s phone to her purse.
The narrator repeatedly visits Veronica while she recovers at the hospital. Despite having a broken jaw, Veronica tells the narrator that Josh ran away two years earlier, when he was 13. She says he left a note on his pillow, which prompts both Veronica and the narrator to cry. At the time, the narrator doesn’t know why this made him cry. The next day, Veronica texts him, telling him not to return because she’s ashamed of being seen that way. The narrator continues to keep her company by texting her.
The narrator deduces that his mother must have had Josh’s new house number and called his parents to tell them that Veronica was at the hospital. This puts a strain on their relationship since the narrator is unsure what else his mother has withheld from him.
At one point, the narrator calls Veronica and listens to her breathe. She then texts him to say that she loves him. Overwhelmed, he texts her back, saying that he reciprocates her feelings. She declines his offers to visit her but promises to see him soon. She eventually texts him to meet her at The Dirt Theatre for a movie. He waits at the theatre, but Veronica never shows up. He watches the movie, during which a man sits next to him. The narrator tries to tell him the seat is reserved, but the man doesn’t respond. Veronica texts him, promising to see him again soon.
The narrator tells his mother of his concerns about Veronica, and she reveals that Veronica died after his last visit several weeks earlier. The narrator becomes agitated, unsure who has been texting him since then. The novel reveals that Veronica’s parents never found her phone among her belongings, which is why they never closed her phone line. Later, her parents received a sizable bill for Veronica’s phone line after hundreds of pictures were sent from her phone to the narrator’s. The narrator’s phone can’t receive the pictures, which is why he wasn’t aware of them.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
These chapters start to unite elements that earlier parts of the novel introduced, such as the shark pool float and the mysterious photos that made the narrator aware of his pen pal’s sinister intentions. Most crucially, Chapter 6 recalls the events of Chapter 2, implying that Josh was the target of an abduction plot like the one the narrator experienced the night he woke up in the woods, as the element of the runaway note: Josh’s family found a note on his pillow, just as the narrator’s mother found a note before he returned from the woods in Chapter 2.
The narrator has a visceral reaction when Veronica tells him about Josh’s note, hinting that he’s at least subconsciously aware of the resonance between Josh’s experience and his own, even if he isn’t yet aware of the connection between Josh’s disappearance and his own childhood experiences. The fact that Veronica speaks plainly of Josh’s decision to run away suggests that she believes the story the note provided. Her inability to see other possibilities mirrors the narrator’s lack of awareness about the truth of his childhood when he’s still a teen. Only later, when he recounts the moment as part of a sequence of connected events, does he become aware of what the note really meant. The narrator’s reaction to the note foreshadows his revelation in the novel’s last chapter and thematically underscores The Cost of Knowing the Truth.
Additionally, these chapters heighten the sense of menace regarding the town where the narrator lives, thematically reflecting Loss of Innocence and Trust in an Idyllic Small Town: The narrator comes to realize that every part of his childhood masks a darker secret. For instance, the novel initially presents Mrs. Maggie as a warm and sympathetic character but gradually steeps her in ambiguity until her story is inextricable from the broader threat that looms over the narrator and Josh. The narrator’s mother mediates part of the narrator’s distance from Mrs. Maggie, instituting rules to protect him from outcomes that she purposely leaves unclear. She talks around Mrs. Maggie’s illness but never explains what will happen to him if he enters her house. The ambiguity surrounding Mrs. Maggie’s death compounds the ambiguity regarding her house. The novel relies on readers’ imagination to interpret what the men in biohazard suits might be carrying out in the contamination bags. This scene further amplifies the novel’s foreboding mood.
The narrative technique continues to deliberately include many details yet leave them in a state of flux or disconnection, from the abandoned construction site to the abandoned mall that inspires rumors of a monster. This gives the narrator’s pen pal wider berth to commit transgressions. In Chapter 5, a stranger in the woods speaks to the narrator and Josh while they’re on the raft. In Chapter 6, the driver of the car that hits Veronica conspicuously stalks the narrator, as if wanting him to notice. Later, the narrator expects Veronica to show up at the cinema, not realizing that the stranger who takes her place may have been the person he has been texting all along. It’s unclear what the pen pal wants to achieve by orbiting the narrator without engaging him directly. It’s possible that he could be trying to fulfill his intention to abduct the narrator, but the pen pal refrains from acting on his proximity to the narrator, as if biding his time, which only increases the tension that his presence creates. This, in turn, makes everyone the narrator encounters, from the police officer in Chapter 2 to the sweaty ticket seller, as well as Mrs. Maggie’s estranged family members, potential suspects as the narrator’s pen pal.
Central to this ambiguity is the narrator’s relationship with his mother, who tries to institute rules in his life to guarantee his protection. Near the end of Chapter 6, however, the narrator’s relationship with his mother becomes strained in ways that make his inability to follow her rules feel like a form of transgression in itself. His insistence on seeing Veronica clearly offends his mother. However, he resents her for obstructing him from reconnecting with Josh. This makes the narrator’s mother seem sinister too, but only for as long as her motivations and the extent of her knowledge remain unknown to the narrator and readers. Ironically, only when the narrator can confirm that his mother has shared the whole truth with him can he feel fully safe around her. This helps develop A Parent’s Instinct to Protect Their Child as a theme.
Unlock all 50 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs