61 pages • 2 hours read
Caroline B. CooneyCode Orange
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
This chapter switches back to Mitty’s point of view. After leaving Olivia in Central Park, he heads home to delete the letter on his computer, since he doesn’t want his parents to find it. A woman claiming to be from the CDC stops him on the street and tells him that they need to test him because there is a remote possibility he has smallpox. Mitty runs away from her, suddenly afraid of being trapped on a hospital bed, alone, with smallpox. But then he stops running. He remembers his desire to protect society from this threat and realizes that “[t]his is how the disease will be spread. Me. Running and breathing. Mitty Blake, hot agent. A threat to his country” (144). He realizes that he needs to turn around and face his fate. He must go with them; he doesn’t want to infect anyone. But when he goes back, he realizes something is wrong, but it’s too late because he’s knocked unconscious.
Mitty wakes up in a basement, where he discovers that he has been restrained by duct tape. He worries not only about where he is and who his kidnappers are, but also about whether he will develop smallpox symptoms; it has been ten days since he held the scabs. In fact, he develops a terrible headache and intense shivers, which he interprets to be smallpox symptoms. Suddenly, he vomits, and his captors rush down and “high-fived each other and laughed deep, satisfied chuckles” (148), apparently happy at this sign that he has smallpox. Mitty tries to fight them but is easily subdued. The kidnappers then rush upstairs, clearly afraid of being exposed to what they believe are smallpox symptoms, leaving Mitty downstairs.
Mitty tries to figure out what to do. He realizes that the people who have kidnapped him are terrorists who want to use smallpox for terror. They found him by discovering the information he himself put online. But in the end, Mitty takes some solace when he realizes that his captors have accomplished what he wanted to do anyway—he has suddenly become isolated from the world, and the world is safe from smallpox, for now.
Chapter 14 Summary
Olivia and Derek still have no idea what has happened to Mitty. The FBI agents warn them that “[t]he most important thing is not to throw New York City into a panic. We cannot use the word smallpox” (157). Derek is doubtful of the FBI’s ability to find Mitty. Even though the headmaster, Dr. Larkin, instructs them to go back to class, Derek and Olivia know that is impossible. They must do something to help find Mitty. They leave school in the middle of the day and try to figure out what to do. They decide to go to Mitty’s apartment and talk to his parents.
Olivia wants to walk by the Hudson River on their way to Mitty’s apartment. Derek says, “‘He’s not in the river, Olivia. If the NYPD or the FBI thought Mitty drowned himself, they’d be out there’” (158). Nonetheless, both of them can’t help staring at the river.
They go to Mitty’s apartment and talk to his parents. His mother is distraught about her son, telling his friends how shocked she is. She’d had no idea what Mitty was going through. She then asks Olivia if Olivia thinks Mitty took his own life. Olivia confidently and calmly tells her no, in contrast to the doubts she expressed earlier. Derek assures her as well, but he avoids looking at Mitty’s father, “afraid that while Mitty’s mother was still hoping, Mitty’s father had assumed the worst” (162).
Mrs. Blake then asks them what they think of the FBI’s theory about terrorists having kidnapped Mitty. She tells them that when the FBI arrived, they searched for the scabs and swabbed for fingerprints. While it is clear that Olivia and Mitty’s mother are holding hope that Mitty is alive, Mitty’s father and Derek are thinking that hope is impossible. If he doesn’t have smallpox, Derek is sure terrorists will never let Mitty go alive since he will be able to identify them.
Chapter 15 Summary
Still trapped in the basement, Mitty searches his surroundings and finds a small nail that he can use as a weapon. He also listens to the radio he can hear playing upstairs to find out if his disappearance has made the news. It hasn’t, and Mitty can’t understand why because he knows his mother will be frantically enlisting all the help she can. The kidnappers throw Mitty a bag of McDonald’s food, which he eats immediately because he hasn’t had any food since his kidnapping.
He thinks about how the kidnappers might use him as a bioterrorism weapon:“The only real option for these guys was to use Mitty as the infection agent” (169). He also thinks they don’t realize the danger they are in since they could easily be exposed to the virus through the hole in the ceiling. Mitty has limited time before he becomes infectious…if he is to become infectious.
Even though he tries to figure out other options, he knows the only way to save his city is to die before he can be used as a weapon. He thinks of the different ways he can kill himself. He can break the water pipe so that the basement fills up to the electric panel, which will then cause him to be electrocuted. He can disable the safety valve on the gas furnace to cause an explosion. He also hints at a third possibility, one that he has been thinking about ever since he saw the furnace. This option will require a great deal of courage.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
Terrorism, which has been lurking in the background throughout the entire novel, finally makes its appearance in these chapters. Mitty has been kidnapped by terrorists who take great delight in seeing Mitty apparently sick with smallpox. Mitty is aware that they want to use him as a weapon. Terror also attacks Mitty’s parents, who are devastated by Mitty’s disappearance, and Mitty’s friends, who are lost as they imagine the worst possible outcomes.
But unlike the parents, the friends, and even the FBI, who are powerless to stop these terrorists, Mitty is not powerless. He must change his former complacency. He is used to dreaming big but accomplishing nothing. But now is the time for action, not just talk. He does not just sit in the basement, awaiting his fate. He carefully studies the basement so he knows every part of it and takes anything that he can potentially use as a weapon. He brainstorms ways to foil the terrorists. Like the passengers on Flight 93, whom he considers to be the ultimate heroes, he, too, will do everything he can to save his country.
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By Caroline B. Cooney
