84 pages • 2 hours read
Alexandra BrackenThe Darkest Minds
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A 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 20-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary
Ruby, Liam, Chubs and Zu sleep in the minivan that night. In the very early morning, Ruby and Liam wake up, talk, and hold hands in the front seat. Ruby worries it isn’t safe to touch him, even if it feels “right” (312). She tells him about seeing dreams and seeing inside his head. He says he feels he has known her longer than two weeks, but there are things he doesn’t know, and he hopes Ruby will feel she can tell him. He also says he understands that some memories belong to her and that she doesn’t want to share them.
Two hours later, they say good-bye to Black Betty to continue on foot for safety reasons. Zu puts four flowers on the windshield as a memorial. It begins to rain, and Ruby thinks about how wet and sore they will be. She feels the panic button in her pocket and considers getting rid of it because of what she’s learned about the League, but she decides to keep it.
They are walking along the highway toward East River when they hear the sound of a truck crash. They watch as a group of figures dressed in black and ski masks climb out of the trees to attack a flipped semi-truck. When one pulls a knife on the driver, Ruby screams, and the figures in black pull guns on them. Their attackers start going through their bags, and they find the letters and start reading names aloud. One of the attackers recognizes the names, and then recognizes Liam. The attackers are Psi kids, too, and one of them, Mike, knows Liam from Caledonia. He tells the others to let them go, and they do. As the kids in black gather the cargo from the truck, Mike explains they are doing a supply run. He invites them to come back with them. Liam says they already have a “tribe,” meaning the group of Black Betty travelers (325), but Mike tells them he’s not part of a tribe; he is with the Slip Kid.
Chapter 21 Summary
Ruby, Liam, Chubs and Zu arrive in East River, a camping ground with a lake and cabins. Mike leads them up the road carrying boxes of fruit from the truck. Chubs tells Ruby how well-liked Liam used to be at Caledonia, and Chubs doesn’t seem to like Mike.
They approach the Office/Camp Shop, the main building, and they see a black Psi symbol painted on the porch that frightens Zu. Liam asks Mike about it and why everyone wears black. Mike reacts tensely, saying Psi is the symbol of kids with abilities, and black is neutral, incorporating all colors.
Inside the building, there are supplies and food. They go up to the second story, where there is an open attic room with an office, TV, and bed. Ruby recognizes Clancy Gray working there from his portraits at Thurmond. He looks up and speaks her full name. This frightens Ruby, who moves toward the door. Clancy apologizes and says he’s read her file and feels like he knows her. He recites her life story from her file, including what happened to her parents, until Liam shouts at him to stop. Clancy says he is excited to find another Orange, and he asks about Thurmond, where he was an inmate, too. Clancy instructs Mike to get them a cabin. As they are leaving, Clancy enters her mind with an image of himself and a rose apologizing. Ruby, overwhelmed, goes by herself to an old dock on the lake.
That night, Ruby finds Liam to have dinner with the camp kids by the bonfire. Chubs decides to read by himself. They find Zu happily with a girl Ruby recognizes as the girl from Caledonia in Zu’s dream. The girl, Hina, introduces herself as Zu’s cousin, a Green. Ruby and Liam lean together by the fire. When music plays, Liam uses his abilities to pull Ruby into a dance. At the end of the evening, Ruby sees Clancy watching her.
Chapter 22 Summary
Clancy continues to watch Ruby. Ruby, Liam, and Chubs are given different work assignments. Ruby is in the pantry organizing supplies with a girl named Lizzie when Clancy interrupts them, saying he didn’t intend Ruby to be assigned anywhere, that she is to work with him. He puts an image of them working together in her mind, and then notices that she can’t block him. He offers to teach her, and even though that’s what she originally wanted, Ruby hesitates.
She goes back to her dock hideout, but Chubs is there. He points out if Clancy is willing to teach her, she does need to learn to control her abilities. They walk back to camp for lunch. Chubs says he hasn’t been able to send a message to his family, as only Clancy has a computer. Ruby says she will ask if he can use it. They sit and watch Liam happily play football. Ruby and Chubs still feel aloof from others.
The next morning, Ruby goes to see Clancy, who is pleased to see her. He says that he can see through his access to the League’s network that besides Martin, they are the only Oranges left, and they are unique. He offers to explain his own story by showing her his memories. He gives her his hand and shows her his father, the president, giving permission to begin tests and enter into Thurmond. She sees him using his abilities to convince people he is cured, and then making speeches from notecards. Finally, she sees a Secret Service agent try to kill him, and Clancy escaping and running away. He stops sharing memories, and he explains his father figured out he wasn’t rehabilitated and tried to have him murdered. After that, he started East River, and his father lied and told the world he went to college.
Clancy says that he discovered the League planted the frequency in the White Noise at Thurmond that day so that she would be found out as an Orange; they were specifically looking for Oranges. When she is shocked, he reminds her she probably would have been killed anyway. All Oranges are killed, and all Reds, he tells her, became part of his father’s classified program called Project Jamboree. Disturbed by all he has said, Ruby feels determined to learn to use her abilities.
Chapter 23 Summary
Clancy gives Ruby a tour of the camp, and she notices he has a charismatic effect on kids, even without using his abilities. She notes the camp runs based on his judgment calls rather than rules. They visit the classroom where Zu and the other Cubbies (the name for students) are learning history lessons.
Weeks pass, and Ruby works with Clancy in his room daily. She sees Chubs at meals, Zu less often, and Liam very rarely, as he is on a night security watch. Ruby misses Liam. However, she is getting along well with Clancy, and they have started doing lessons on his bed. He is able to enter her mind with ease, but she cannot enter his. She finds herself attracted to him sometimes but is confused by this impulse.
Ruby tells Clancy she wants to learn to prevent erasing memories, and he says he doesn’t know how to do that. He tells her he thinks of her as a friend; actually, he says, “I consider you a lot more than that” (383). They practice her trying to block him from entering her mind. After many tries, she is able to get better. She imagines having a picnic in her parents’ backyard with her parents, Grams, Sam, Chubs, Zu, and Liam. Liam kisses her. When Clancy tries to enter the daydream, she is able to push him out, not wanting to share it.
Later, Ruby finds Chubs on the dock, and he refuses to speak to her. He is angry that she, Liam, and Zu are making friends instead of figuring out ways to get home. He says East River is too similar to the camps they came from, and he points out Ruby hasn’t even remembered to ask Clancy about him using the computer.
Ruby finds Liam later coming out of the washrooms, and he introduces himself like they have never met.
Chapters 20-23 Analysis
In this section of the novel, Bracken introduces the camp at East River and the character of Clancy Gray (the Slip Kid). These two new developments will set up the last act and climax of the novel.
This section sees an important shift in setting, which is also connected to the novel’s theme of the significance of choosing your own home and community. In Chapter 20, the characters have to say good-bye to Black Betty, the beat-up minivan that has been a recurring setting for much of the narrative since the introduction of Liam, Zu, and Chubs in Chapter 8. This is an emotionally loaded moment for the characters because the car has served as a home—a place of protection—and they mark it symbolically by putting flowers on the windshield, as though it were a funeral.
By Chapter 21, however, the characters have acquired a new home, at least temporarily: East River, a campground of Psi children and teens on a lake. Chubs and Ruby are initially overwhelmed by how many more people are included in this new community versus their old home inside Black Betty, but there are many reasons for them to feel positively about this new place. At East River, they observe other young people living cooperatively and safely, being happy, and engaging in leisure activities, something they have not seen for years. After living there a while, Ruby, Zu, and Liam create social connections there and feel a part of the community. However, Chubs feels alienated and remains suspicious of East River, finding it too similar to the Psi internment camps, and he is more eager to move along to home, as was their plan originally. Chubs, at least, is not certain this is a good community, a place to choose to make a home, and this through-line will continue in the next section.
Another change in this section is the introduction of a new major character, Clancy Gray, also known as the Slip Kid. Clancy is a character who is well-loved by the other kids at East River, so Ruby and the others expect to admire him, too. Yet Ruby’s initial impressions of him are negative. When he seems to know everything about her when they first arrive in Chapter 21, she is afraid. The first few times he pushes himself into her mind, she is uncomfortable. Although she wants to, she does not entirely trust him when he offers to teach her to use her abilities in Chapter 22. By Chapter 23, when Ruby is working with Clancy more regularly, this has changed. She is sympathetic to the story he shares with her about his relationship with his father, President Gray. She views him as intervening in camp disputes wisely, and she describes him as charismatic and even attractive. She appears eager to get his approval. These fairly rapid changes in Ruby’s perceptions of Clancy are foreshadowing that he is not all he purports to be and provide hints to the reader that he may be using his abilities to manipulate Ruby's feelings toward him.
In this section, too, the group of four friends—Ruby, Liam, Chubs, and Zu—becomes increasingly separated at East River. Ruby is learning to use her abilities with Clancy, Liam is working a night watch doing security, and Zu is at school with the other Cubbies, or spending time with her cousin Hina or with friends. Chubs, who is already unhappy, is isolated and cut off from connections with old friends. This means the old community from Black Betty is not able to check in on one another as they had in previous chapters.
