51 pages • 1-hour read
The Bones Beneath My Skin
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
The three continue north, primarily driving on back roads. Alex turns on the radio, but there are no reports of yesterday’s events. Eventually, they pull into a rest stop that has some shaded tables. The three of them get out of the truck, and Nate prepares to listen to Alex and Art’s story.
Art tells Nate that she was discovered by a hunter one night during a reconnaissance that she and others of her species were conducting. Art had chased the hunter and infected him, taking over his body and controlling it herself. The hunter had been employed by the Mountain, which was near the location where Art’s ship had landed. When the Mountain sent someone to retrieve the hunter, they found him behaving strangely, as Art didn’t yet know how to operate a human’s arms and legs. When the Mountain studied the hunter, they found that his brain was wrapped in strange-looking tendrils, showing how Art was controlling him. Once they discovered Art, they held her prisoner and subjected her to many questions and tests.
While Art was infecting the hunter’s body, he didn’t age. He “stayed twenty-four years old for twenty years,” according to Alex (183-184). One day, they brought a young girl to the Mountain; due to her encephalitis, she was in the grip of a years-long coma. They forced Art out of the hunter’s brain with electrical impulses and forced her into the girl’s brain, seeking to test whether Art could heal the girl. After a year, Art figured out how to open the little girl’s eyes and move her about; at this point, she met Alex. Although she and Alex initially disliked each other, they soon became attached to each other. Art then explains that she and Alex plan to find Art’s family members, who are returning to pick her up from Earth after all these years.
Later that night, they stop at another motel. Nate traps Alex in a private conversation and asks him why he took Art away from the Mountain. Alex responds that he had to since they were hurting her. He then turns the question back to Nate, wondering why Nate didn’t flee when he had the chance. During the conversation, Nate realizes that Alex must have lost someone before meeting Art. Randy mentioned that the Mountain had chosen Alex due to his grief, wondering whether Alex would form a symbiotic relationship with the alien. However, when Nate asks him about it, Alex won’t answer any of his questions.
Early in the morning, while everyone else is still asleep, Nate sneaks to the front office of the motel and calls his brother. He tells his brother that he isn’t sure when he’ll see him again, but he urges him to recall the good memories that they had together. He then tells his brother, Ricky, that he loves him. Then he hangs up the phone and sneaks back to bed.
Chapter 12 Summary
From the motel, they head east for days, keeping away from the highways whenever possible. They stop to watch a herd of bison, and Nate asks more questions about alien life and knowledge. Finally, one day, they arrive at Havre, Montana.
Art tries to convince Nate that Alex will need him after she leaves for her home planet. Nate has a hard time believing her, as Alex seems so independent and competent. Suddenly, a sheriff’s vehicle pulls up alongside theirs, and a deputy gets out. Alex, who is inside the store, sees this happening, his eyes narrowing. Art throws herself to the floor of the truck, and Nate grips her hand for comfort. As he does so, he hears mysterious voices in his head and sees a succession of strange images that are seemingly produced by Art’s mind and telepathically transmitted to Nate. Nate realizes that the voice he is hearing in his head belongs to Alex, who is thinking at him as he emerges from the store and returns to the truck.
Before Alex can get to the truck, the deputy stops him and asks a number of questions about where they’re coming from and where they’re going. Eventually, the sheriff lets Alex go, but he then follows the truck out of the parking lot and pulls them over when they reach a road, lights flashing. The deputy tells them that they have a busted taillight but lets them off with a warning, without running their stolen plates. Alex puts the truck in gear, and they drive far out of Havre. As they drive out of town, they spy a comet flashing overhead in the dark night sky.
Chapter 13 Summary
As they proceed east and south, Art requests a visit to Badlands National Park. They go into a small store to purchase a map of the area, and Art overhears a conspiracy theorist named Steve Cooper talking about aliens over the radio. As they continue to drive, Art continues to listen to Steve Cooper over the radio, giggling at the man’s nonsense.
They find a campground in the Badlands and set up their tent and supplies. As Nate watches Art and Alex roughhouse, he feels happy, but he is also intensely nervous about his own happiness, as if his feelings might betray him. They eat dinner together on the truck bed and talk about the stars, aliens, and Art’s experiences in the Mountain.
That night, Nate impulsively tells Alex that his father murdered his mother before dying by suicide. He also tells Alex that his parents disowned them after they’d discovered his sexuality. Although the conversation is difficult for him, Alex admits to Nate that he identifies as bisexual. Alex also tells him, in detail, the story of how he met Art at the Mountain, and their initial connection and bond.
Alex explains that he and Art had been tormented by an authoritative leader known as Laura, who had separated them for months at a time. Over time, Art had used her telepathic connection with Alex to show him that her family was returning for her. Eventually, Alex decided to help her escape. The escape was dramatic, as both were forced to fight soldiers in order to get free. At one point, they were confronted by Laura in a parking garage, and she shot Alex in the chest to stop him. Art used her powers to destroy the building, allowing them to escape, and then she healed Alex’s gunshot wound with her mind. Afterward, they found shelter at Herschel Lake, where they encountered Nate at his parents’ cabin. Now, after Alex finishes the story, he affectionately trails his hand across Nate’s face.
In the morning, Art approaches Nate and warns him that she knows where they need to go now, and that there are “rough days ahead” (257).
Chapter 14 Summary
The three of them arrive in Amish country in Pennsylvania. They have come there to meet the hunter whom Art had originally inhabited before possessing the little girl; the hunter’s name is Oren. They find him at a farmhouse with a number of other people: followers who believe Oren’s stories of aliens and possession. Oren tells Alex and Art that he has been waiting for them and expecting their arrival. Nate wonders how they won’t be tracked to this location, but Oren reveals that he faked his death decades ago and now lives under the name Peter Williams.
A woman named Dolores gives Art, Alex, and Nate a tour of the farmhouse. She makes them a vegan meal, which Art hates. Peter tries to show them to their quarters and attempts to separate Art from Alex, but they refuse to go along with this plan. Peter acquiesces unwillingly, and Nate wonders if he was subtly insulting him and Alex.
Chapter 15 Summary
After a few days, they emerge from the barn to find tables spread out across the lawn, with tiki torches illuminating everything. Peter and his followers lay out a spread of food, and Peter gives a speech thanking Art for changing his life all those decades ago. He leads the group in a toast to Art, despite how uncomfortable she clearly feels. After dinner, they clear everyone’s plates and begin to dance as a group to Billie Holiday music. Art shyly requests that Alex dance with her, and Nate realizes that he loves both Art and Alex, though he is not sure when this inner transformation occurred. After they finish, Alex asks Nate to dance, and they pull each other close and dance slowly to the music.
That night, Nate realizes that Alex isn’t in bed. He goes downstairs and finds him waiting in the dark, by a window. Alex begins to admit to Nate the early feelings that he felt when he’d first met Art—mostly anger and hatred, which then shifted over time as he got to know the young alien. Alex also admits that he bonded with Art because of his grief over losing his own family at such a young age. Suddenly, Alex kisses Nate, and they admit their feelings for each other with relief.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
In these chapters, expanding narrative revelations—specifically the history of Art and Alex, and the revelation of Alex’s true feelings—showcase the increasingly complex interplay between alienation and connection. The text employs retrospective storytelling techniques to deepen character histories, with Art’s origin story serving as a narrative fulcrum. This section therefore goes beyond mere plot exposition to establish a mythological framework that contextualizes previous narrative peculiarities while adding new dimensions to the novel’s exploration of otherness. The “infection” and body possession imagery represent literal alien biology and set forth metaphorical notions of identity assimilation and the inherent alienation of consciousness.
In a deliberate departure from the structure of earlier chapters, the author employs settings that shift constantly as Nate, Art, and Alex travel across the country to try to escape the Mountain’s soldiers. Additionally, the physical movement across American landscapes mirrors the characters’ psychological evolution. Their trek through various locations—rest stops, Montana, the Badlands, and finally Pennsylvania—creates a map of developing relationships. The text utilizes these changing settings as external manifestations of internal states, with each location offering different facets of American identity that contrast with Art’s fundamental foreignness. The Badlands, in particular, function as both literal landscape and metaphorical territory—a place of beauty and desolation that reflects the characters’ liminal existence between human society and otherworldly experience.
The Healing Influence of Found Family is also further demonstrated as Nate and Art become closer and as Nate becomes more accepting of Art’s strangeness. This process is intensified when Art brings Nate into her method of telepathic communication, diminishing the distance between them and using this telepathic link to establish a triangular relationship dynamic in which thoughts flow among all three characters. This unique interpersonal dynamic reinforces the characters’ increasingly unified identity as a family unit.
Within this framework, the author examines Art’s past history, revealing an extended timeframe that transforms what might have been a simple escape story into a broader meditation on the dynamics of institutional power and resistance. Given that Art had been trapped in the Mountain for nearly three decades, it is clear that she was systematically mistreated there and denied all respect and consideration despite her status as a sentient being. In the Mountain, she was robbed of her very personhood, reduced to a codename (Seventh Sea), and treated as an object of study rather than a conscious entity. In this way, the author delivers an institutional critique that addresses broader questions about the ways in which societies categorize, marginalize, and control those deemed to be “other.” In this sense, Art’s alien status is used to illustrate the real-world mistreatment of those with marginalized identities.
Art’s unequivocal status as an “other” is likewise mirrored by society’s marginalization of Nate and Alex’s sexuality. Alex’s disclosure that he is bisexual creates structural symmetry with Nate’s own lived experience as a gay man. The text carefully positions this information alongside Art’s alien nature, suggesting that various forms of difference exist on a continuum rather than in separate categories. The romantic connection between Alex and Nate develops organically from their shared experience of protecting Art, linking their personal relationship to the larger theme of chosen family formation.
The introduction of Peter and his community—which is eventually revealed to be a cult—creates narrative tension by providing contrasting approaches to the extraordinary. Peter’s decision to transform Art’s existence into religious doctrine showcases the human tendency to mythologize the unknown; by contrast, the core trio’s lived experience with the same phenomenon remains grounded in emotional reality. Thus, Peter’s followers can be interpreted as a distorted mirror of the trio’s relationship, showing that the same basic knowledge can produce radically different social formations. Additionally, the narrative employs multiple forms of foreshadowing to generate anticipation. For instance, Art explicitly warns about “rough days ahead,” generating tension tied to a specific, future event; at the same time, the subtle unease that surrounds Peter and his community imbues the narrative with an implicit sense of dread. This combination of stated and unstated threats maintains the narrative’s suspense while deepening the meaning behind the main characters’ interactions.
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