48 pages • 1 hour read
Ally CarterI'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A 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 21-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
On her way back to school, Cammie fixates on the fact that it isn’t really her birthday. Tired and distracted, she hits a torch in the passageway, which opens up another path she’s never seen before. The passage leads to places where she can see into different rooms of the school, and Cammie finds her mother in her office, crying. In a flash, Cammie realizes it’s her father’s birthday, and she continues down the hidden passage to an abandoned classroom, where she sits for hours. The next day, Cammie goes to see her mom and walks into a meeting between her, Mr. Solomon, and another professor. Bex’s dad has gone missing, and they ask Cammie how to tell her since she knows Bex well. Cammie advises they don’t tell her yet. They don’t have proof his cover has been blown, and Bex doesn’t need to know yet because there will be “plenty of time for grieving” later (221).
Chapter 22 Summary
Cammie finds it difficult to concentrate in class for the next week. In Covert Operations, Mr. Solomon hands out a form asking whether the students will continue with the class next semester, telling them not to “take this decision lightly” (226). Bex fills the form out, excited about next semester, but Cammie just stares at the form with a bad taste in her mouth.
Chapter 23 Summary
One Saturday, Cammie’s class goes into town to go Christmas shopping. Though it puts her relationship with Josh at risk of being discovered, Cammie goes. Once in town, she fakes a headache and leaves the rest of the girls to go to Josh’s family pharmacy. Josh just stepped out to make a delivery, but his dad invites Cammie to have an ice cream on the house and wait. Cammie does and sitting in the sunlit store with her chocolate Sunday is “the first time in weeks I felt almost normal” (230).
One of the other girls in Cammie’s class enters the store, and Cammie hides. The girl needs her inhaler filled, and while she waits, Dillon and the other boys who wanted to moon the Gallagher Academy enter. They corner the girl and taunt her until Macey and Bex arrive to fend them off. Cammie watches the girls leave from her hiding place, and through the window, she sees Liz staring at her “as if she didn't know me” (236).
Chapters 21-23 Analysis
The passage Cammie finds in Chapter 21 symbolizes the decision Cammie faces about which world to live in. The path she’s taken many times is the world she knows. This new path is the world she’s just starting to learn, but that world comes with new experiences and with things Cammie potentially doesn’t want to face. Her mother’s tears are literally one of those things while also representing any other unforeseen hardship Cammie doesn’t realize the “normal” world has. Cammie starts to feel guilty in these chapters. Realizing she forgot her dad’s birthday makes her wonder if Josh is distracting her from being a spy too much and seeing her mother’s grief makes her understand that she can’t run from her own feelings of sadness. Cammie doesn’t quite realize it yet, but pretending to be someone living a “normal” life can’t erase the hardship she’s lived as a spy.
The news about Bex’s dad and watching Bex and Macey come to the girl’s rescue at the pharmacy are two events that nudge Cammie back toward being a spy. Since she’s still grappling with her sadness about her own father’s death, Cammie feels terrible leaving Bex to deal with the possible consequences of her dad being missing. Wanting to keep it a secret from Bex shows how far Cammie will go to protect her friends and foreshadows her choice to give up Josh. The incident in the pharmacy makes Cammie realize how much the academy and her friends mean to her and how much their disapproval stings.
