Punk 57

Ryen, Lyla, and the other cheerleaders work a bake sale at the baseball game that night. Masen shows up to flirt with Ryen. Ryen likes that she and Masen are sneaking around so she doesn’t have to explain their relationship to anyone else. She compares it to what she used to have with Misha.

In the car, Masen reassures Ryen that she’ll be safe from the consequences of their illegal outing. Ryen confesses to Masen that she likes him and has a hard time showing it and saying it. Masen is quiet, so Ryen feels embarrassed.

They arrive at Trey’s empty house. Masen won’t explain what’s inside, but Ryen is the only one he trusts to bring along. They move through the dark house while Masen searches for something. Masen digs through Principal Burrowes’s drawers and jewelry boxes before moving on to Trey’s room. While searching, they find Trey’s stash of pornographic photos of girls from school—photos he obviously took of them in compromising positions. Ryen knows many of the girls—one of them is Lyla, and the photo is very recent. Ryen feels disgusted. She won’t be going to prom with Trey now.

Ryen begins to cry and laments the person she’s turned into. She regrets chasing after terrible friends, leaving behind decent people. She adds that even Misha abandoned her. Masen reassures Ryen that there’s nothing wrong with her. When Ryen says she has no friends, Masen says she has him, and the rest aren’t worth it anyway. He almost says he loves her, but he catches himself. Masen makes Ryen feel safe and secure.

At home, Ryen contemplates the words on her walls. She misses Misha, but she feels like Masen pushes her to be the person she wants to be—the person she presented to Misha. She studies the words Alone, Empty, Fraud, Shame, and Fear that she’s taken from Masen. She also wrote down what he said to her while they were intimate at the drive-in, “Close your eyes, there’s nothing to see out here” (234), because it resonated with her. Ryen thinks the words sound like song lyrics, so she types them into a search engine. Ryen discovers a YouTube video of a band named Cipher Core and discovers that Masen has really been Misha all along.



Ryen cries out from the deep betrayal. Ryen makes connections, like Masen’s knowledge of her inhaler and her love for Twilight, upset that she didn’t know sooner. She’s enraged that Misha had sex with her under false pretenses. She realizes she truly has no friends.

Misha returns home to find the house in disarray, and his dad passed out from Xanax on the couch. Misha wishes he could talk to Ryen right now. He needs her strength to deal with this. Misha confesses to his sleeping dad that Annie called the night she died, and he ignored it. It still haunts him at night. He laments that the relationship with his dad has disintegrated due to their grief. He wants to be there for his dad, even if he can’t replace the relationship that his dad had with Annie. Misha cleans up the house before leaving again.

Misha and Dane meet up at The Cove to discuss Misha’s lyrics. Misha is preoccupied with how he’ll confess everything to Ryen. Masen Laurent was just the name he picked out when he got a fake ID from his cousin. He’s hiding his identity from more people than just Ryen. When they arrive at Misha’s hideout room, Ryen has already been there to vandalize it. She left several of Misha’s letters to her on the floor. Ryen has written one of Misha’s lyrics on the wall to indicate she knows Misha tricked her. She’s also stolen Misha’s collection of his favorite letters. Misha is so distraught that he abandons Dane and heads straight for Ryen’s house. The letters mean everything to him: his love for Ryen, their history, his muse.

Ryen is furious and has been crying for hours. She tells him to leave and says she burned the letters. She yells at him for breaking her trust, manipulating her, and taking whatever he wanted without thinking about her feelings. Desperate to prove he really cares about her, Misha lifts his shirt to reveal that his tattoos are all inspired by lyrics Ryen wrote or helped him write.

Misha tries to explain that he didn’t come here to manipulate Ryen, but Ryen lashes out, wondering why he didn’t confess his real identity. She feels humiliated and thinks Misha is creepy for doing what he did. Misha retorts that he felt betrayed by Ryen when he learned she wasn’t who she portrayed herself to be, and he had no reason to be honest with her.

They continue to argue. Ryen insists that she was her truest self when she wrote Misha, even if she wasn’t always honest about her social life. Everything else was true. Misha understands because he left out similar things. Misha asks why Ryen would encourage him to stand up for himself when she couldn’t do that. Ryen says she wanted the best for him because she loved him. Misha tries to touch her, but Ryen starts crying and tells him to leave. Misha feels he’s broken everything. He intends to fix things and earn Ryen’s love.

Ryen skips cheer practice. She’s apathetic toward everything now. Misha has left several messages on the walls around school, hoping to earn Ryen’s forgiveness. The messages make Ryen cry. Misha attends art class, to Ryen’s discontent. She’s so thrown off that she lashes out at Manny when he bumps into her. Ryen threatens Manny and then turns to Misha and acknowledges what a terrible person she is before leaving class to cry privately.

Lyla is hostile toward Ryen, upset that Ryen is acting weird and drifting away. She mentions that Trey got in trouble over the weekend. Principal Burrowes was upset at something she found upstairs. Misha takes Ryen aside to talk privately, but she doesn’t want him here. Misha pleads with Ryen, reminding her how important she is to him. He can’t go on without her because she’s part of everything positive in his life. Ryen reminds him how much he broke her heart and betrayed her trust. She can’t see past that to remember what she had with Misha before Masen.

Ryen attends Trey’s party that night, hoping to let loose a little and forget Misha for a while. She stays beside Ten, whom she trusts to help her enjoy herself. Ryen drinks a beer and dances with Ten. Ryen doesn’t plan to drink more, but Ten does. He asks if he can do a body shot on Ryen. Both friends laugh and have fun.

Misha attends band practice. He hopes Ryen will contact him. He sees a video on social media of Ryen posing for a body shot. Misha gathers his bandmates to crash the party. He thinks Ryen is trying to upset him, and it’s working. J. D. greets Misha and offers to be nearby if Misha needs him.

Trey tells Misha that Ryen went upstairs to have sex after getting drunk. Misha attacks Trey but stops when he notices Trey’s watch. It’s Misha’s grandfather’s timepiece. Misha is furious that Trey has it. He cuts the watch off Trey’s wrist, throwing it to his bandmates and telling them to leave. Ryen tries to break up the fight, but the police beat her to it. They halt the party. Misha won’t talk to the police, so they bring him into the station.

Misha is the grandson of a senator, so his cousins bail him out of trouble, insisting that the family handle Misha privately. Ryen shows up to make sure Misha is okay. When he appears fine, she tries to leave, but Misha chases her through the parking lot. He apologizes but then lashes out that Ryen was at the party. Ryen says she hates Misha, but he insists she loves him and confesses he loves her. Ryen slaps him. She would rather have Masen than Misha right now. Misha decides to give her what she wants. He begins kissing her and talking dirty to her. Ryen kisses back passionately. They climb into the back of Ryen’s car and have sex.

When they finish, Misha recalls Ryen writing to him about her first time and explains how he knows she was waiting for things to feel right to have sex again. He knows she waited for him. He admits to being jealous and possessive as soon as he read about her first time. He wants her and knows she wants him.

Ryen worries when Misha isn’t in school the next day and feels conflicted about the sex they had. She hates that people are growing aware of whatever’s happening between her and Misha. Ryen tries to meet up with Lyla, but Lyla and Katelyn ignore Ryen and talk badly about her. Ryen feels like she did in elementary school, when everyone excluded her. 

At lunch, Trey harasses Ryen with disgusting talk about what he should do to her and what he’s been doing to all the other girls at school. Ryen tries to sit alone, but Lyla dumps orange juice on her. Ryen and Lyla begin to fight, but Misha breaks it up. Trey tries to get involved, but Misha vows to protect Ryen. Misha punches Trey. J. D. holds him back from continuing. Misha threatens Trey and insults Lyla and then takes Ryen to the bathroom to clean her up. Ryen asks if they’re still friends. She can accept that Misha and Masen are the same person, and that doesn’t change the connection they share.

Misha takes Ryen back to his house. Ryen confesses to visiting to see if Misha was okay. Misha says he’ll explain why he stopped writing another time. Misha washes Ryen’s clothes and makes her a sandwich while Ryen showers. In Misha’s room, Ryen finds the boxes of letters she sent him. He kept them all. She worries he got bored with how much she wrote, but he assures her he adores her. Ryen admits she didn’t burn the letters she took from The Cove, to Misha’s relief.

Ryen tells Misha about Delilah, her only friend in elementary school. Delilah didn’t dress cool and was alone as often as Ryen was. When Ryen decided she would rather hang out with the popular children, she hid from Delilah at recess until Delilah got the message. When Delilah was still an outcast, alone at recess months later, Ryen began to hate who she’d become. When she began writing Misha the following school year, she used that as an opportunity to be the person she wanted to be again. Misha comforts her. He says everyone makes mistakes and has an ugly side.

Ryen feels like her friendship with Misha has fallen back into place. She’s comforted by him again. Misha tells Ryen she doesn’t have to hide herself or be ashamed because she’s great. He wants her to see that. Ryen acknowledges she’s better off being true to herself, even if it means she’s alone. She and Misha nap.

Ryen wakes up to Misha writing on her. They talk flirtatiously about having anal sex, which neither have done before. As they grow more intimate, Misha asks Ryen to talk to him. Misha fingers Ryen while Ryen tells Misha about a time she fantasized about him and touched herself. Misha asks for consent, and Ryen says she wants him everywhere. Misha makes sure Ryen trusts him. Ryen thinks about how they hurt each other but that they’re stronger and happier together. She says she trusts him and wants him, and they begin intense, passionate anal sex.