33 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren OliverBefore I Fall
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A 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 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 opens with a nightmare that Sam is falling forever; the dream ends with the car accident. Then her alarm sounds and Izzy urges her awake. Sam realizes she doesn’t know how she got home the night before. When Lindsay texts her, she realizes that it’s Friday—Cupid Day—all over again. Her sense of déjà vu continues, with the big events of the day the same but lots of slight differences.
This time, when she receives the rose from Kent, she leaves it behind; he follows her after class to try to give it to her. He starts to invite her to the party but she sees Rob and runs off. Rob wants to go to Kent’s party. When Lindsay texts her about the party, she agrees to go. At Ally’s house, before the party, Sam and Lindsay discuss Sam having sex with Rob and Sam feels nostalgic for all the times she’s spent in Ally’s house with her friends.
The four friends go to the party and Sam realizes that because the day went differently than the first version, peoples’ lives are better. She realizes this second version of the day is not a dream or déjà vu. After waiting and waiting for Rob to come back after he gets more beer, Sam decides that she needs to leave the party, but her friends want to stay. Juliet Sykes arrives and calls them out, as Sam knew she would. After the party, Lindsay starts to drive them home. Sam is scared because she’s certain Lindsay is going to drive them off the road and kill them, and she ends up driving off the road in the same way she did “before.”
Chapter 3 Summary
Sam wakes from a nightmare about falling to find that it’s Feb 12 again—Cupid Day. This time, when Izzy appears, Sam says she’s sick. Her mom gives her permission to sleep some more, and says she’ll tell Lindsay that Sam will be in late to school. She feels lonely and cries herself to sleep. When she wakes up, she hopes she’s actually in a coma instead of dead, and feels hopeful for the first time that day. Her mom drops her off at school. Now she can’t wait to go, because Sam thinks the answer to her time-loop problem lies there. She tells her mother she loves her and goes into the building.
Sam decides to be nice to people, to do the right thing, certain this will be her ticket out of this time loop. After class, Kent talks to her again. Sam is determined not to go to his party. He’s sure she’ll end up coming to his party; she’s sure she won’t. She tries to tell her friends she can’t go to the party because she and Rob are on the rocks. She shows them the note he sent with his Valogram, which just says “Luv ya” and is a disappointment to Sam...even though the real reason she doesn’t want to go out is to avoid the accident.
When Juliet enters the cafeteria and Sam’s friends start making fun of her, Sam asks Lindsay why she hates Juliet. Lindsay insists she doesn’t hate her. The four of them agree not to go to the party and plan to watch a scary movie instead. Sam skips English class with Lindsay and they go to TCBY. They end up teasing one another and having a food fight, and are kicked out. Back at school, Lindsay wants to smoke but they almost get caught by the assistant principal, Ms. Winters, known as the “Nic Nazi.” Sam hides in a storage closet.
From her hiding spot, she overhears Ms. Winters and Mr. Otto, the gym teacher, talking—and then kissing. She escapes the storage closet and is on her way to her locker to get a book for class when she bumps into Lauren, who is freaked out and asks Sam to tell “them” she didn’t do anything wrong. The chemistry teacher and school administration think Lauren cheated off Sam during the chemistry quiz because they have the same answers. Sam tells her she can’t help her. Lauren calls her a bitch, but then apologizes, and Sam runs from Lauren.
Later at Ally’s house, Sam starts to become fearful after midnight. She survives past the moment of her death in the car—12:39 AM. She falls asleep with her friends, thinking of which day in her life would be perfect to relive again and again. At 1:52 AM, they’re woken by the telephone. Ally’s mom answers, and then comes down to break the news—Juliet Sykes committed suicide by shooting herself. Lindsay is the only one who seems completely unaffected by Juliet’s death.
Sam looks through Ally’s old yearbooks and discovers that Lindsay and Juliet were once best friends. At least, until fifth grade, which is when Lindsay spread the rumor that Juliet peed in her sleeping bag on a girl scout trip and started calling her “Mellow Yellow.” Sam confronts Lindsay, who doesn’t really respond, and then goes to sleep. Sam dreams about a time she and Lindsay were driving and Lindsay drove straight at another car until the other driver swerved into a ditch. Then in her dream, Sam falls through endless darkness.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
On her second run-through of Cupid Day, Sam is confused as to why she’s being forced to relive this day. She’s not entirely sure if she really died the night before, or if it was just a vivid nightmare. As events unfold, she feels a powerful sense of déjà vu that further unsettles her. Her uncertainty causes her to question the events of her day, to try to find an event or action that leads to her death. At this point in the story, Sam is simply trying to orient herself toward reliving Cupid Day. It’s not until Chapter 3 when she wakes up a third time on Cupid Day that she realizes she’s not trapped in some dream. Somehow, and for some reason, she’s trapped in this time loop.
The vision of Vicky’s face—and the guilt that accompanies this final image—as well as the way Sam’s friends treat Juliet Sykes convinces Sam that she has to try to be nice. If she’s nice and does the right thing, then maybe she won’t die. This plan crumbles, though, when Lauren gets caught with a quiz too similar to Sam’s. Because Sam remembered Lauren’s answers from when she cheated off her quiz on the first Cupid Day, their answers are still too alike.
Sam is convinced she’s going to survive her third Cupid Day, and so she can’t stomach the thought of getting caught cheating. She’s convinced that her chemistry teacher will call Boston University and then she won’t be able to go to college.
Sam does manage to prevent her friends from going to the party. Without the party, they won’t have any need to be on the road late at night, so she thinks it will save her. Instead, Juliet Sykes commits suicide. Sam is shocked and distraught at this news, and she decides to investigate Juliet’s and Lindsay’s history. This if the first time she really delves into the fact that Lindsay is a bully, and that by going along with it, so is Sam.
She learns that her actions have consequences—sometimes deadly ones.
