Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

“Lately, Jeffrey had been complaining a lot that his ‘parts hurt,’ which we hadn’t been understanding too well.” 

Before Jeffrey falls and hits his nose, he tells Steven that he isn’t feeling well and that he needs some oatmeal to “warm up his parts” (15). After Jeffrey is diagnosed with leukemia, Steven and his parents feel guilty for not taking Jeffrey’s complaints about his “parts” hurting more seriously or realizing that something was seriously wrong before his bad nosebleed.

“And this was the absolute worst thing about last October 7th, the one moment I’ll never forgive myself for: When my mother began to tell me that my baby brother had leukemia, my first thought was relief.” 

After Jeffrey falls and has to be taken the E.R., Steven spends the school day worrying that he will get in trouble for not watching his brother closely enough while he was sitting on the stool in the kitchen. Consequently, he is initially relieved to learn that Jeffrey’s illness was not caused by the fall and that he won’t get in trouble. Steven is ashamed of this reaction as Jeffrey’s cancer diagnosis is ultimately a much worse outcome than getting in trouble would have been.

“Apparently to my friends I had two roles: ‘funny guy’ and ‘drum guy.’ So as long as I carried a pair of sticks and kept the humor coming, nobody was going to guess anything was up with me.” 

Even though Steven is secretly upset about Jeffrey’s cancer, he conceals his true emotions from his friends at school. As a result, most of his friends fail to realize that something is seriously wrong with Steven since he continues to crack jokes and play the drums. 

“There was this truly pretty girl sitting at the piano, with this amazing posture and her hair falling long around her face in a quite non-Annette-ish way and a serene look I had never noticed on her face before.” 

The first time Steven recognizes Annette’s beauty is when he is watching her play piano in the band room on a bathroom break from class. Unlike his attraction to Renee, which is based purely on her physical appearance, Steven’s attraction to Annette begins as he listens to her exquisite playing of Chopin. Although Steven’s romantic interest in Annette will continue to grow, at this point in the novel the spell is broken when she stops playing and becomes flustered upon realizing Steven has been watching her.

“Dances and dodgeball: the two Ds of my middle school nightmares.” (“

Steven compares going to school dances to playing dodgeball for geeks like him since both activities make him feel self-conscious and exposed. This analogy calls attention to Steven’s anxiety about being at his first 8th-grade dance and his fear that he will be ignored and rejected by girls like Renee.

“Right on the spot, without knowing what exactly was going on, I made God one final offer: ‘Take me. Don’t take Jeffy. Take me.’” 

When Steven’s mom bursts into his first 8th-grade dance to pick him up, Steven panics about what might be wrong with his brother and suddenly tries to make a bargain that reveals he would be willing to offer himself to save Jeffrey’s life. 

“Boy, if you ever want to shut up a room full of grown-ups, evidently ‘My brother has cancer’ is the secret command code.” 

When Steven reveals that Jeffrey has leukemia, his teachers are shocked into uncomfortable silence upon realizing what has caused Steven’s bad grades. Although they immediately become sympathetic and promise to let him make up the work he has missed, their responses to the news demonstrate that people are often uncomfortable talking about such a serious subject as pediatric cancer, a reaction that Steven sees repeatedly as the people in his life gradually find out about Jeffrey’s cancer.

“I seriously think I could have sat in the middle of the kitchen floor rubbing two sticks together over a pile of dynamite blocks and gasoline cans, and my parents would be oblivious, as long as I was keeping myself occupied.” 

When Jeffrey first becomes sick, Steven often resents the fact that his parents are so worried about his brother that they rarely seem to pay attention to him. This line expresses his feelings of hurt and neglect in Steven’s typically humorous and sarcastic fashion. 

“If you promise you will get better instead of dying, I promise I will, too.” 

When Steven is sent to his grandparents’ house while he is sick with the flu, Jeffrey sends his brother Matt Medic to help him get better and writes him a note. In the note, he mentions that he heard his mom tell his dad that Steven sounded like he was going to die and asks him to promise to get better. While Steven is not truly in danger of dying from the flu, however, Jeffrey’s leukemia might actually be fatal. The note suggests how much Jeffrey depends on his older brother to keep him brave and optimistic during his battle with cancer. 

“But part of me was thinking, ‘What’s the point of practicing for a stupid concert when my brother might not live to see it?’” 

After Jeffrey has been sick for a few months, Steven begins to experience “What’s the Point? Syndrome” where everything he used to enjoy begins to seem pointless since his brother might be dying (177). The fact that Steven can’t even find meaning in practicing for the spring concert he once cared about so much reveals just how hopeless he has begun to feel.

“Instead of agonizing about the things you can’t change, why don’t you try working on the things you CAN change?” 

This is the advice Mrs. Galley gives to Steven after he goes to her for help after he starts having nightmares about Jeffrey dying. Her words help Steven to control his negative thoughts when he feels powerless and inspires him to take a number of actions to help Jeffrey and his family, including giving up his private drum lessons to help with the family’s financial problems and shaving his head to support Jeffrey.

“I was so far into the Zone that even Renee’s arrival in her lycra uniform couldn’t throw me off.” 

This quote marks an important moment in Steven’s development. Earlier in the year, when he is playing so well that he enters “the Zone,” he completely loses his concentration when Renee enterswearing her cheerleader uniform. This time, however, he is too focused on the music to be thrown off by her presence. It also testifies to the fact that Renee’s appearance no longer has the same disarming effect on Steven as it once did.

“What do you call a planet where bad guys stroll through life with success draped around their shoulders like a King’s cloak, while random horrors are visited upon the innocent heads of children? I call it Earth.” 

In response to Miss Palma’s prompt, “If you could choose one word in the English language to describe the universe, what would it be?” Steven chooses the word “unfair.” In this excerpt, he humorously expresses anger at the way that bad things often happen to good people, even perfectly innocent children like his little brother Jeffrey. This journal entry testifies to the way that Jeffrey’s diagnosis has forced Steven to begin to grapple with the unfairness of life.

“Stay with your brother, Steven. Stay with him, no matter what. Do you promise?”  

Steven’s new friend Samantha extracts this promise from him as he is saying goodbye to her during his first visit to the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. When Steven is deciding whether he should stay to play the second half of the concert or accompany Jeffrey to the E.R., he remembers his promise to Samantha and resolves to stay with Jeffrey. He never sees Sam again, as she dies before he can return to the hospital, but her words about staying with Jeffrey “no matter what” teach him a powerful lesson about the importance of sibling relationships.

“Wow! ‘A good man.’ You caught that, correct? Steven is a man now.”

Steven is thrilled when his dad tells him that he is “turning into a good man” on the drive back from the hospital in Philadelphia. He takes it as a sign that his parents are finally recognizing that he is growing up. 

“This woman had spent nearly half her time this year at the hospital with her son, praying for him, watching over him, comforting him, handling all this overwhelming cancer stuff. And suddenly, as she reached out and squeezed my arm, I realized without any shadow of a doubt that she would have done the same for me.” 

When Steven returns from the hospital in Philadelphia after seeing everything that is involved in Jeffrey’s treatments, he has newfound respect for all his mom has done for Jeffrey while serving as his main caretaker. Even though Steven has sometimes felt neglected by his mom during the past year, in this moment he realizes she would have shown the same devotion to him if he were the one to be seriously ill. After this epiphany, Steven is filled with gratitude that he and Jeffrey have a mother who would do anything to protect and care for her children. 

“If there was one thing I’d finally figured out, it was that your mind is something you always CAN change.” 

Steven spends months struggling with his feelings of sadness, anger, apathy, and self-pity in response to Jeffrey’s illness, but Mrs. Galley’s advice to focus on what he can change instead of on what he can’t helps him to realize that he can take control of his thoughts and emotions.This realization marks an important stage in Steven’s growth as a character.

“I guess I realized that my family needs a dad more than they need a few extra bucks. Jeffrey, my sweet little boy, needs me to be around to support him when he isn’t feeling well. My wife over there needs me to be around to support her–all the time. And my big, talented boy over there […] deserves to have his father see what an amazing musician he is. He’s also an amazing brother and just an amazing guy. I know you all call him the Peasant […] but I think he’s a prince. Thank you, Steven, for watching out for your family, even when your father wasn’t.” 

During the intermission at the All-City Jazz Band concert, Steven’s dad makes a speech to thank the band members for the benefit they have organized on behalf of Jeffrey and their family. In this speech, Steven’s dad admits that he hasn’t done the best job of being there for family over the past year and promises to try harder to be supportive to his wife and sons. The character of Steven’s dad makes clear that adults also struggle when faced with adversity and can continue to grow even as adults. 

“Somehow, overnight, I had figured something out: Renee was beautiful, but she was my friend. On the other hand, Annette was my friend, but now she was beautiful.” 

Steven comes to this realization after hearing Renee’s and Annette’smessages on his family’s answering machine after the spring concert, when Annette kissed him on the cheek. In the last few months, he has learned to look past Renee’s good looks and popularity to see her as an ordinary classmate with whom he can be friends. At the same time, he has learned to value Annette’s friendship and recognize her as beautiful inside and out. 

“Oh, God. Now I would always have two pairs of Special Sticks

After informing Steven that Sam has died, a nurse brings him a note and package that Sam has left for him. In the note, Sam tells Steven she is returning his drumsticks and asks her to think of him when he uses them. Although he already has a pair of “Special Sticks,” the pair that Sam borrowed will now be “special” as well, since they will always remind him of her.

“Annette has that my-boyfriend-is-from-space look that I’ve been coming to know pretty well lately.” 

With this line in the epilogue, Steven hints that in the weeks since the kiss at the spring concert, Annette has become his girlfriend. 

“I may be the only kid in America who ever clinched the Musical Achievement Award by skipping out on his big concert. I guess maybe my biggest achievement was learning there’s more to life than taking the big drum solo.” 

Although music remains a critical part of Steven’s life, Jeffrey’s battle with cancer has taught him that caring for others and cherishing family are more important than achieving recognition through playing the drums. In the end, his relationship with his brother matters far more than whether he has the “big night” at the final concert that he dreamed of all year.

“As I walk out of the stadium to the grass where my classmates are milling about, wondering which way to start the next big walk into our futures, I think about Samantha. She died without a sister by her side–but she also made sure that Jeffrey would live with a brother by his.” 

As he is preparing to embark on the next stage of his life–high school–Steven thinks about Samantha, who died before she could begin that phase of her life. Although he is saddened by the fact that she died without her older sister with her, he credits her with teaching him about the importance of sibling relationships by making him promise to stay with Jeffrey.