60 pages • 2-hour read
Punk 57
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Chapters 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “Ryen”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, sexual harassment, bullying, death, substance use, illness, and cursing.
Ryen is sore the next day from the sex. She isn’t sure if she’ll see Misha in school, but he shows up and stays by her side, wanting to guard her from Trey, Lyla, and the others. The art teacher gives “Masen” a slip to meet with the principal, but he throws it away.
Ryen asks about the scarf, and Misha confesses it was Annie’s. Ryen feels bad about rejecting it, but she remarks that Annie probably wants it back anyway. Misha goes silent. The principal catches Misha in the hall and demands that he go to her office, but he refuses and curses her out. He tells Ryen to find him at The Cove after school and kisses her goodbye. Ryen wonders what’s going on with his living situation, the watch he retrieved from Trey, and his spotty attendance.
Ryen sees Trey come out of the bathroom and throw away a pendant she recognizes as Manny’s. Trey corners her and makes sexual threats toward her, saying he’ll find her when Masen isn’t around.
Ryen finds Manny in the bathroom, bleeding from his ear where Trey ripped out his gauge. Manny doesn’t want Ryen’s help because she’s one of his bullies. Ryen understands. Manny explains how bullying now is different from when they were children because it follows him home on social media. He gets high on huffing paint to deal with the pain. Ryen embraces Manny, and they both cry. Ryen helps him clean up and takes him by the hand, leading him to lunch. She realizes that, while her bullying of Manny wasn’t personal to her, it was personal to him. They sit together at lunch, but Manny is on edge. Someone throws an apple at their table, splashing macaroni onto Ryen. She and Manny laugh at the noodle in her hair.
J. D. and Ten join the able. J. D. needs new friends since his girlfriend and best friend were hooking up behind his back. He wrote the message on the lawn, as a one-time Punk copycat. Ryen isn’t ready to confess, as she has one more project that Punk planned.
J. D. invites the table as a group date to the prom. He tells Ryen he’ll protect her from Trey and Lyla if Masen can’t attend. He extends the offer to Manny, who is still unsure, but Ten jokes with Manny to soften the tension. Ryen searches Misha’s name on Google, and she’s shocked by what comes up.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Ryen”
Ryen confronts Misha at The Cove, upset that he didn’t tell her about Annie’s death. She read about it online. Misha explains how Annie was an overachiever who pushed herself too hard and began to abuse drugs to keep up. That’s why she collapsed during a jog. Misha explains that he couldn’t deal with anything after that. He couldn’t face reality. He needed Ryen, but he didn’t know how to talk to anyone anymore. Ryen assures him he can talk to her now.
Ryen asks why Misha enrolled at her school if not to stalk her. Misha gives a vague answer about looking for someone he used to know. Ryen wishes he’d be straight with her. Ryen asks for Annie’s scarf back, and Misha agrees. Ryen says she loves him. Misha wants to meet Ryen’s mom. Ryen asks Misha to join her on an illegal errand.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Ryen”
Misha meets Ryen’s family before prom but doesn’t join her in the limo with J. D., Ten, and Manny. He says he’ll meet Ryen at prom. Ryen looks around for Misha but cannot find him. She enjoys herself anyway. She doesn’t feel like eyes are on her. The dancing and heat agitate her asthma, so Ryen pulls her inhaler out in front of her friends. J. D. checks that she’s okay. Lyla, Trey, and Katelyn try to harass Ryen on the dance floor, but J. D. chases them off.
Misha’s band takes the stage for a performance. Misha sings the song he “dedicated to the cheerleader” (320). It’s full of references to his relationship with Ryen and lyrics inspired by their letters. Misha meets up with Ryen after the song to tell her how much she inspires him. Ryen and her friends leave the prom early. Ryen gives them spray paint, tells them the plan, and explains that she’s Punk.
On Monday morning, the halls are covered in sexually threatening quotes from Trey, signed with his name. The quotes inspire many of Trey’s victims to come forward with their accounts of his behavior. The police arrive at school to sort things out with Trey. Principal Burrowes finds Misha and demands that he go to her office. Misha obliges. Ryen worries he’s going to get himself in more trouble.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Misha”
Principal Burrowes lectures Misha about the fighting and graffiti. Principal Burrowes asks for contact information for Misha’s parents. Misha tells her his mother left, and that his father’s name is Matthew Lare Grayson.
Principal Burrowes is Misha’s mom. Once he reveals he’s the toddler son she abandoned, Principal Burrowes struggles to keep herself together. Misha unloads on her about all the things he would’ve liked to have in a mom and guilt-trips her about Annie’s death and missing Annie’s funeral.
When Annie found out their mom was living a town away with a new family, she tried to create a relationship by sending their mom newspaper clippings and photos of her accomplishments—the file Misha stole from the office when he first got to town. Misha demands that his mom say to his face that she was never going to come back or look for them. When Principal Burrowes relents, he leaves, but not before promising to introduce himself to his half-sister, Burrowes’s young daughter, when she turns 18.
Later, Misha tells Ryen that he didn’t ask why his mom abandoned them because it shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t want someone who doesn’t want him. She also took Misha’s grandfather’s watch, which should have gone to Misha, when she left. It enraged Misha to learn she’d given it to Trey. Misha returns Annie’s photos and locket to her bedroom.
Ryen finds several letters to Misha from record companies, but Misha won’t sign anything without his band. He also doesn’t want anything to separate him from Ryen again. He worries about touring with the band this summer before Ryen goes to college in the fall. Ryen convinces him that it will be okay because they’ve already had a long-term, long-distance relationship that stands the test of time. Misha agrees he’ll tour if Ryen agrees to write a letter to Delilah. Ryen is apprehensive but agrees.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Ryen”
Ten months later, Ryen is in college. Misha’s band has seen great success. He and Ryen write to each other and video call regularly. Ryen spots a message on the stairwell wall: a lyric from a song Ryen likes. She follows the stairs up to her dorm, finding more messages. She’s excited that Misha has come to see her.
Ryen finds Misha waiting in her dorm room. They are happy and flirtatious together. Misha reveals he wants to take time off to attend college. Ryen is ecstatic that this means they get to spend their days together.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Ryen”
Five years later, Ryen and Misha are married. She is pregnant with their first child. Misha’s song has been nominated for an Oscar after being featured in a film, but Misha is so reclusive that the media hasn’t seen him in months. He’s busy writing more songs. After college, Misha reformed his band, and they’ve seen enormous success.
Ryen and Misha’s apartment is covered in lyrics, written on appliances and posted on walls. Ryen and Misha take a bath together, where they proceed to playfully argue about a mirror Ryen has chosen for the bathroom wall and discuss Misha’s future public appearances.
Chapters 19-24 Analysis
The final chapters of the novel feature the novel’s climactic prom and aftermath, as well as the final revelations about Misha’s mysterious business at Ryen’s school. Of these six chapters, only Chapter 22 is told from Misha’s perspective, allowing the many loose threads of Ryen’s social life and personal development to take the central focus. Ryen’s character growth is most exemplified through her interactions with Manny in Chapter 19. When Ryen finds Manny bleeding in the bathroom after Trey has ripped Manny’s gauge out, she’s saddened that Manny doesn’t want her help or trust her because “He thinks I’ll victimize him. And why not? I’ve done it in the past. Grief fills my heart. How many times have I made him feel alone?” (302). Ryen recognizes that Manny has no reason to trust that she has good intentions, and she knows this is her fault. Despite what’s in her heart, Ryen has not been a good person. She recognizes that “My being an asshole was personal to him, but it wasn’t personal to me” (305). Ryen goes on to sit with Manny at lunch, an action that leads to the development of her new friend group, who accompany her to prom and help her execute her final act as Punk. Ryen’s interactions with Manny develop the theme of The Consequences of Bullying by illustrating the devastating impact Ryen and her friend group’s bullying has had on Manny, a behavior she rejects by the novel’s end.
The friend group Ryen attends prom with proves to be better quality friends than Ryen’s old group. Once Ryen starts standing up for what’s right and showing the school her true self, these characters emerge as loyal to the real Ryen. Ryen feels comfortable enough around them to use her inhaler at prom when she feels an asthma attack creeping in. Unlike the mean girls that Ryen befriended long ago, none of Ryen’s friends give her trouble for needing the inhaler. This moment develops Ryen’s inhaler as a symbol of her insecurities. Once Ryen shows her true self to her friends, they accept the parts she’s insecure about, just like they accept her inhaler. Ryen’s new friend group also develops the theme of Staying True to Oneself by showing how staying true to one’s values rewards one with better company.
Ryen’s new friends help her vandalize the school one last time, this time with Trey’s incriminating words, filled with sexual threats and derogatory statements. This final act of using the written word as truth helps deliver justice to the victims of the antagonist, Trey. The written word returns as a symbol of love in the epilogue chapters, when Misha writes on the wall at Ryen’s dorm to surprise her and when their future apartment is covered in Misha’s lyrics.
The final chapter from Misha’s perspective, Chapter 22, finally answers the mystery surrounding Misha’s presence at Ryen’s school. The revelation that Principal Burrowes is Misha’s biological mother, who abandoned his family when Misha was a toddler and eventually remarried, taking on the role as stepmother to a new son the same age as Misha, explains why Misha has reacted so contemptuously to her throughout the novel. This revelation also explains why he searched Principal Burrowes’s drawers for his timepiece. Misha explains, “She took it when she left—maybe to spite my dad or pawn it for money if she needed—but somehow she ended up giving it to Trey” (334), answering the remaining mysteries about Misha’s business at Ryen’s school. The conflict between Misha and his mom develops the theme of The Importance of Maintaining Close Relationships, as Misha unloads his feelings about having an absent mother to Principal Burrowes. Misha expresses, “I wanted a mom […] I wanted you to see me play the guitar […] I wanted to see you Christmas morning and for you to smile at me and miss me and hold my sister when she was sad or lonely or scared” (331). Misha’s description of the pain his absent mother caused him and Annie develops the idea that close relationships are worth maintaining to prevent harm and promote love and growth.
Finally, the epilogue chapters follow through with the wish fulfillment side of the romance genre, as Ryen and Misha get to live happily ever after in a penthouse full of luxury and lyrics after Misha becomes an Oscar-nominated superstar musician. Ryen is pregnant with their firstborn, and their dynamic of messing with one another while maintaining their tender longing is still going strong. Their success and happiness show that, despite their dishonesty and imperfections, they were always meant to be, just as they suspected when they were still pen pals.
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