“‘They aren’t exactly lining up, Larissa. You’re gonna get married one day and leave me. I don’t want to end up alone. I want a man. I’m sick of breaking down my own boxes. I want someone to dig out my damn car when it snows.’ ‘But Phil? Mom. Know your worth.’ […] ‘I don’t know. Sometimes you gotta have a flash sale, you know what I’m sayin’?’”

This conversation between Nancy and Larissa shows their differing opinions on romantic relationships. While Nancy, who begins this excerpt, thinks that being in a relationship is more important than valuing herself, Larissa thinks the opposite. Nancy’s casual diction (“gonna”; “gotta”; “you know what I’m sayin’?”) characterizes her as someone less formal and polished in language and mannerisms than Larissa, while her frank conversation with Larissa reveals the candor and intimacy between them.

“Mike was the charismatic one of our group. If he had his sights on someone, nobody else stood a chance. Especially me. I wasn’t charming or confident like he was […] By the time I was standing in front of her at that concert, I was worn out and I just wanted to go home. But I had wanted to drive her. I hated that ‘irritable’ was her first impression of me. […] I don’t know why it bothered me so much.”

Chris thinks this about the night he and Mike met Larissa at the concert, after Larissa has told him that her initial impression of him was “irritable.” This is one of many times throughout the novel where Chris puts himself down in contrasting himself with Mike. This also highlights how different his and Larissa’s feelings were upon their first meeting, something that bothers both of them as their relationship progresses.

“I don’t know that I’d be as good of a person if the world had treated me the way it treated her. Even out here, lost and hot and tired and sunburned, she was positive and making the best of it. […] She was so talented—and I don’t think she ever sat still.”

Chris thinks this about Larissa when they get lost on their long walk. Larissa’s optimism and tenacity are some of the qualities that Chris loves most about her, and they’re brought out the more he sees what she has to put up with in life. Larissa’s hardships and inability to “ever s[it] still” speak to Economic Precarity Shaping One’s Sense of Agency, as her cycle of poverty makes it extra hard for her to simply relax or do anything just because she wants to.

“There was this book I read once that talked about the psychology of people in survival situations. How humans have a hard time rewriting the script in their head […] I ask myself if I’m doing something because it’s what I’m used to, or if I’m doing it because it’s objectively the best thing to do.”

Larissa tells Chris this when they contemplate whether to move forward or go back when they realize that they’re nowhere near the end of their walk. This concept influences many of Larissa’s decisions in the novel and is alluded to frequently. It also relates to the major theme of the courage to choose an unfamiliar path, something Larissa, Chris, and other characters must face throughout the story.

“What was the point in demanding that he work himself to exhaustion just for the sake of it? God knows I wish I didn’t have to. Rest always felt like something I had to earn. Like I could only have it if I did enough to deserve it. He was lucky.”

Larissa thinks this about Mike when she compares their financial situations and notes how he typically only works part-time. Not only does this show how Larissa often contrasts herself with Mike in regard to their work and finances, but it also highlights Larissa’s exhaustion. This relates to the theme of economic precarity shaping one’s sense of agency, as Larissa feels like she has to focus too much on her economic situation and isn’t afforded the luxuries that Mike and others are.

“I wasn’t going to dump my shit on him now that he was finally asking out of guilt. Mike was clearly barely handling his own crap. He couldn’t handle mine. It was always like this, I realized. Or at least it had been for a while. I let him get away with constantly relying on me, without it ever going the other direction.”

Chris thinks this as he drives Mike back to his car the morning after he got drunk and shoved Chris outside a restaurant. Chris’s admission to himself that Mike relies “constantly” on him “without it every going the other direction” speaks to Loyalty as an Ethical Principle, as Chris sometimes confuses loyalty with enabling others and denying his own needs. Learning to tell the difference will form a key element of his character arc.

“We did not touch. Ever. Not once in all the time I’d known her. Not a hug or a handshake. I don’t know at what point I decided that touching her was something I was never going to do, but I had. I avoided it so much I couldn’t tell you with certainty that I’d catch her if she fell.”

Chris thinks this about Larissa well into their friendship. Though he hardly admits his romantic feelings to himself, Chris knows that even just touching Larissa would exacerbate those feelings. Their lack of physical contact throughout the majority of the novel symbolizes just how much both are holding back in their relationship and how forbidden it feels to Chris and Larissa.

“Something about the breaking promises to himself thing put me on alert. The hint of a pattern I’d already seen way too many times in my life. I was trying to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal. It was a party. It was only three drinks, and he hadn’t touched a drop since the cabin.”

Larissa thinks this after she sees Mike drunk at the party, even after he had said he wouldn’t be drinking. Mike’s behavior here reminds her of the men who have been with her mother, and here, Larissa tries to contrast herself against Nancy again. However, she tries to wave the seriousness of the situation away because she thinks better of Mike, not realizing that she’s avoiding the courage to choose an unfamiliar path.

“By the way she always balked at help, I wondered if it got offered enough. It didn’t seem natural for her to take it. She didn’t want the ride to the hospital, I’d had to coax her to breakfast, force myself into her apartment to get her luggage. Anytime she took anything from anyone, she was apologetic and it felt like a last resort.”

Chris thinks this about Larissa after he offers to help her with her work. His observation that Larissa is always “apologetic and it fe[els] like a last resort” whenever she accepts help from others reflects the theme of economic precarity shaping one’s sense of agency. Since Larissa is used to having to rely on herself for everything, she struggles to feel worthy of assistance even when she needs it.

“I thought back to that night. Mike, being Mike. Flirty and smiling at me. And Chris, hands in his pockets, dark cloud. But then I remembered something. How he’d mentioned that he was closer to River Grove than Mike was. […] That was a bid. And I’d missed it. Chris had been hitting on me, in his own quiet way, but was eclipsed by Mike. He’d wanted me. I don’t know why but this flipped my entire reality around.”

Larissa thinks this when she learns that Chris wanted to drive her home the night of the concert. Not only does this show how Mike won her over with his more obvious flirting, but it also shows how Larissa now sees the subtleties in Chris’s attentions toward her. She realizes that courage sometimes means looking beneath the surface to discover who other people truly are.

“Chris took a lot upon himself. I saw it. The way he always looked out for Mike. The way he took such good care of Woofarine. The way he took care of me. I thought about the nuts he’d tossed in the trash at the cabin. I kept coming back to it. It didn’t even surprise me that he checked the pantry for me. […] Chris loved with his whole heart. He gave all of himself to the people he cared about. And he cared about me.”

Here, Larissa is starting to put together the pieces regarding Chris’s feelings for her (“And he cared about me”). His acts of service become a key motif in the text, as they’re one of the main ways he shows his commitment to loyalty as an ethical principle.

“‘She will leave. Do you hear me? And you won’t get a second chance.’ […] If he wasted this […] he’d never get over it. He wouldn’t move on and find someone else. There would never be a time where maybe I could…She’d be the one who got away for the rest of his life. Because if it were me, I’d feel the same way. Maybe I already did.”

Chris tells Mike that he won’t get a second chance with Larissa after reprimanding him for his behavior at the party. While this passage shows Chris’s loyalty to Mike, it also reveals his own complicated motives. When Chris admits, “Maybe I already did,” he reveals his own growing attraction to Larissa and the way he’s projecting his own feelings onto Mike.

“Things with Mike were good, everything was okay. I’d even told him I loved him finally—and I did. It just felt fragile for some reason, like any little thing could change my mind about it. I was always on the fence with Mike. I was lukewarm about us, all the time.”

Larissa thinks this several months into her relationship with Mike. Her feelings for him have never been as strong as his feelings for her, but as the novel progresses, she starts to question whether or not she can sustain a relationship like this. Just as she downplays things like Mike’s drinking, she downplays her own feelings to maintain the sense of a normal relationship, revealing her reluctance to embrace the courage to choose an unfamiliar path.

“Larissa was a capable woman, she could dig out a car. But why the fuck should she have to? What was he doing to make sure her life was easier? Or safer? Why didn’t this bother him? It wasn’t my job to worry about her. It was his job. And this is how he did it.”

Chris thinks this as he’s lying in bed, wondering whether Mike will clear the snow off Larissa’s car. This shows his complex feelings of loyalty to Mike and love for Larissa because he wants to help her but also wants to make Mike look good so that they’ll stay together. This passage also reflects Chris’s ongoing struggle with loyalty as an ethical principle because he often confuses overstepping boundaries with acts of loyalty and love. Although Chris admits that “Larissa [i]s a capable woman,” he still thinks that she should have a man to dig out her car and that it’s Mike’s “job” to take care of her. Instead of allowing Mike and Larissa to work out their dynamic for themselves, he inserts himself, which means that Mike and Larissa don’t really get to know one another.

“I had no control over how I felt. None. Love is self-sustaining. It doesn’t get weak and die when you don’t feed it. Even when I put it away, locked it up, shut in the deepest recesses of my heart, I still loved her in the dark. I could love her from a distance. I could love her in silence. I could love her without even wanting to. And I did.”

Chris thinks this after trying and failing to push Larissa away by dating Heather. While he thought he could forget Larissa, he quickly realizes that his love for her prevents that and that he’ll always be in love with her, regardless of what he tries. Later in the novel, this “self-sustaining” feeling morphs into Chris’s belief that he can live without anyone else, as long as he has Larissa.

“Maybe heaven was just an infinite car ride with Chris. Him behind the wheel. Us leaving everyone and everything behind. Woofarine on my lap, Minnesota in the rearview. Starting over. Going back. Picking right. But you can’t go back. You can only stop making the mistakes you keep making.”

Larissa thinks this as she and Mike are fighting, and she knows she should have chosen Chris. Car rides are important in Chris and Larissa’s relationship, becoming a motif that highlights their bond and choices. Here, Larissa is faced with another decision about her relationship and wonders whether or not she’ll find the courage to choose an unfamiliar path this time.

“‘I would do anything for you,’ he whispered. ‘If I had a nut allergy, I’d taste your food to make sure it’s safe and if it wasn’t and I died, I’d die happy because I died protecting you. Do you understand?’”

Chris admits this to Larissa when they return to Mike’s house after the disaster at the cabin. Though Chris doesn’t outright admit his love for Larissa here, the actions that he kept secret from her show her that he loves her, as does his declaration that he would gladly “die” for her. However, Larissa repeatedly thinks about Chris’s final question here, knowing that it’s his way of saying that he can’t tell her these things because they can never have a relationship.

“I never got a break. I started every day forced to reassemble the shattered pieces of the day before. I never got to feel truly safe and secure and stable because the bad things never stopped happening. And the scariest thing of all was that for the first time in my life, I felt like giving up. Like the inner drive that propelled me forward, the only thing that kept me alive, and housed and fed, was finally exhausted.”

Larissa thinks this after she’s fired from the diner and goes home to tell Chris. This passage highlights just how much her financial situation impacts the rest of her life and how much she has to do just to survive. Larissa has long struggled with economic precarity, as she never gets “to feel truly safe and secure” because she never stops worrying about money.

“This feeling wasn’t fragile. It wasn’t the wisp of a thing I’d felt for Mike. It was roots and trunk and branches reaching to the sky. […] Maybe that’s how you learn truths about yourself, when you’re withered down to nothing so it’s easy to see what’s left. And Chris was it.”

Larissa thinks this when she realizes that she’s in love with Chris. Again, she compares Chris and Mike, noticing that the way she feels about them is completely different because she actually loves Chris. This moment comes at the lowest point in her life, which shows her that she cares about Chris more than anything else.

“Mike stopped being my best friend a long time ago. At some point it shifted and I became his keeper instead. She was my best friend. And I was only realizing it now because it never occurred to me that anyone could ever take that spot from Mike. It was a truth almost as old as I was, something I didn’t even question. And maybe I should have. Because I’d been lonely for a very long time.”

Chris thinks this about his relationship with Mike and how it has shifted over time. As Mike was ignoring Chris, Larissa was supporting him, and Chris took pleasure in supporting Larissa in turn. Chris’s diction here shows how loyalty as an ethical principle has ultimately complicated his relationship with Mike, turning Chris into a “keeper” instead of a true friend and equal. Chris is thus starting to realize that loyalty shouldn’t mean enabling bad behavior.

“‘Chris, I love you,’ I said. I watched the words hit him. I marveled at how easily it came out. How that word that was so hard for me to say to Mike just spilled from my lips for Chris […] He looked at me, his expression pained. ‘I love you too.’”

This moment is when Larissa and Chris both finally admit that they love one another out loud. This also shows Larissa’s frustration with keeping this a secret after having made the wrong decision nearly a year before. Compared to her relationship with Mike, it’s significant that Larissa admits that she loves Chris so soon after her breakup, as she hesitated to tell this to Mike months into dating him.

“Tonight I relinquished every last piece of who I was. My resolve, my conscience, my values. I gave it all up. What was the right thing anymore? What kind of person was I supposed to be? Who did I owe allegiance to? If everyone was going to condemn me anyway, she was right, what was the point?”

Chris thinks this just after he and Larissa kiss for the first time, agreeing to have a relationship regardless of Mike’s feelings. Chris feels like he’s losing himself due to his loyalty to Mike, which he used to believe is what made him a good person. However, he’s now starting to change his ideas about loyalty as an ethical principle, realizing that he must make the right choices for himself instead of just doing what others want.

“I couldn’t just say the uncomfortable thing out loud. Like with Larissa. I couldn’t even say, hey, I can’t afford this expensive-ass restaurant your mom wants to go to. I just let her take me and then I can’t pay the bill and then I’m taking it out on you because you have to save me—and you would never have gotten in that situation in the first place because you would have just said the hard thing.”

Mike tells this to Chris as he apologizes for being a terrible friend. Mike has never wanted to make others uncomfortable, so he never did things like bring up Chris’s mother’s death. Mike’s apology in this chapter shows his character growth and how Chris has influenced him, with Mike revealing the courage to choose an unfamiliar path.