Monday's Not Coming

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018

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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “September”

The novel’s narrator says that she is going to tell the story of how her best friend disappeared from their Washington, D.C., neighborhood, and no one seemed to care but her. A year later, a podcast has emerged, bringing the story up again for the narrator, although her doctor tells her to stop talking about it.

Chapter 2 Summary: “The Before”

Narrator Claudia Coleman, arriving back home after spending the summer with her grandmamma in Georgia, wanted to know if Ma (Janet Coleman) had seen her best friend, Monday Charles. Claudia was worried because Monday hadn’t responded to any of her letters over the summer, like she usually did.

Though they aren’t rich, the Colemans don’t live in poverty. The neighborhoods they passed through were resisting gentrification. Claudia immediately tried to call Monday upon arriving home, but Monday’s phone seemed to be disconnected. Claudia’s suspicion deepened.

On the first day of eighth grade, Ma made Claudia a big breakfast, a first-day-of-school tradition. She made sure Claudia would be accounted for by adults between school and home. “Ain’t nothing wrong with you checking in so someone knows where you are. Breadcrumbs, Claudia. Always good to leave breadcrumbs” (8). According to Ma, Claudia was still too young for a cell phone.

Arriving at school, Claudia was disturbed to still not see Monday, who was usually the first to arrive on the first day of school. She was terrified to go to school without Monday, her only friend. Claudia was immediately bullied upon meeting up with her class. One boy called her a “dyke bitch” (11).

During roll call in Ms. O’Donnell’s (a feared older, white English teacher) class, Monday’s name wasn’t even on the class roster. She didn’t show up for school the rest of the week. Claudia asked Monday’s neighbor, Darrell Singleton, about her. Darrell hadn’t seen her all summer, but he said he saw Monday’s mother visit the drug dealer next door.

Although she was not allowed at Monday’s house without an adult, Claudia rushed there while her mother and father were still at work. Monday lived in the Ed Borough Complex, one of D.C.’s largest public housing areas—not a safe place to be after dark. Claudia had never been inside Monday’s home. Neither Monday nor Claudia’s mother would allow it.

Monday’s mother, Mrs. Charles, opened the door but blocked Claudia from seeing inside. She seemed to be under the influence, and she barely recognized Claudia, although she’d known Claudia since Claudia was a young girl. When Claudia asked where Monday was, Mrs. Charles started screaming at her, simply saying “she’s not here.” Claudia pressed her and Mrs. Charles nearly struck Claudia, telling her to leave immediately.

Later that weekend, Claudia’s father, who drives for a dealership delivering new cars around the country, returned from a long delivery. Daddy is a warm father. The love story between him and Ma is romantic, and their relationship has maintained a passionate energy. Claudia asked Daddy to take her to Monday’s the next day, but he was unable to because of band practice and church. Monday was Monday’s favorite day of the week, and Claudia was convinced she would show up. Yet Monday came, and Monday remained absent from school.

Chapter 3 Summary: “The After”

Daddy has gotten Claudia coloring books, which help stabilize her mood. On Saturday, Claudia spends her day coloring, paying special attention to her palette. “There’s a distinct difference between periwinkle and cobalt blue. Has to be right or the whole picture will be ruined. Without Monday, I felt ruined too” (25).

After fixing a chip in her nail polish, Claudia picks up a journal that Monday gave her. It was an odd gift, as Monday knew Claudia hated writing. Desperate to communicate with her friend, Claudia begins writing a letter to Monday in the journal, saying she got a new bra and wondering if they’re the same size now.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Claudia Coleman, who tells the story in first-person narration, is a girl out of time. She describes past events in chapters labeled either “The Before,” which recount the events in the year following Monday’s disappearance and before the discovery of her body, or “X Years Before the Before,” which offer details of the girls’ friendship from even further back. She shares events from the dissociated period after Monday’s death in chapters labeled “The After.” In chapters labeled by month, she shares events that transpire after she remembers that Monday has died and reorients herself in the present.

As the novel unfolds, certain clues will make clear that Claudia doesn’t know what time she’s in while revealing that other characters do know the timeline, and they know what happened to Monday even if Claudia hasn’t allowed it into her conscious mind. For example, Ma tells Claudia she’s too young for a cell phone, but in truth, she and Daddy are withholding the cell phone because they don’t want Claudia to read news reports and be violently pushed back into the real world.

When eighth grade began after summer break, Monday and her two young siblings were nowhere to be found, and Monday was no longer enrolled at their school. The adults in Claudia’s life brushed off Monday’s absence; Monday’s mother, Mrs. Charles, seemed angry with Claudia for asking about Monday. A neighbor alluded to Mrs. Charles’s drug addiction, saying that he’d seen Mrs. Charles visiting a local drug dealer’s house. Her substance abuse may have contributed to the family's financial troubles and to the horrifying decisions that Mrs. Charles had already made.

A tense sociopolitical climate exists in the African-American community of Washington, D.C. Claudia learns that Monday’s home in a government housing project has been sold to developers. Monday’s mother was angry and upset about this, blaming the developers for almost everything that goes wrong in her life. She warned April and Claudia that people—aka the government—are listening to their conversations. Even beyond Ed Borough, as Claudia noted on her drive to her home at the end of summer, Africa-American homeowners are fighting the tide of gentrification, and they fear losing their homes to white developers who have more money and more political clout.

Claudia’s supportive, attentive parents, who seem to have a happy marriage, contrast sharply with Monday’s single mother and troubled home life. Mrs. Charles won’t discuss her daughter’s whereabouts, whereas Ma tells Claudia to leave breadcrumbs wherever she goes, so her family will know where she is at all times. Despite her hardships, Monday is a vibrant girl and a hugely positive influence on Claudia’s life.

Claudia’s peers assumed that she and Monday were intimate because they were so close, and they would later result to cyberbullying to spread a photo that seemed to confirm those suspicions. The journal Monday gave Claudia becomes an important outlet as Claudia moves closer to the truth of what happened to her friend—and to her. It’s also an important vehicle for defining reality as Claudia’s traumatized mind jumps between time periods.