108 pages • 3 hours read
Barbara Haworth-AttardTheories of Relativity
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2003A 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 22-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Dylan takes the bus back into the city but worries that he has nothing to return to. He goes to Mandy’s and joins Amber and Ainsley at a booth. Amber excuses herself, desperate to get away from Ainsley. Dylan asks if he’s interrupted something, and Ainsley explains she wants Amber to see the street nurse for prenatal care. Amber is malnourished, meaning her baby is too. Dylan tells Ainsley that Vulture cut Amber loose for being pregnant.
Ainsley asks about Dylan’s head injury and what he intends to do next. She says she understands how he feels and encourages him to work on finding a place for the night. Dylan wants to ask where Jenna is but asks about Twitch instead. Ainsley informs him that Twitch is in the hospital with hepatitis and pneumonia, and things are looking grim. She tells Dylan that if he pulls through, it will be almost impossible for Twitch to break the cycle of addiction and street life. Dylan asks how Ainsley managed to do so. She says she was willing to accept help and that she had to decide for herself that she wanted out.
Outside, a car drops off Jenna. She collects money from the driver, and the car pulls away. Angry, Dylan leaves Mandy’s to confront her, ignoring Ainsley’s attempts to stop him. He yells at Jenna for turning tricks and calls her a whore. Jenna tries to get away, but Dylan grabs her and holds her to him, mocking her. He can’t stand thinking of other men touching her. She says it’s nothing new to her but at least now she can make money and feed herself. She warns Dylan to leave because Lurch is coming, and Vulture knows Dylan tried to get her to run away with him. Jenna pushes Dylan away, then steers Lurch back toward the donut shop.
Dylan decides to see if the church is open but finds the doors padlocked. When he turns around, he is surrounded by Lurch and the Bandana Kids. They beat him brutally and steal his backpack, leaving him unconscious on the church steps.
Chapter 23 Summary
Dylan wakes to one of the street people, whom Dylan has deemed the Swear Lady, prodding him. Jenna and Amber are with her. Swear Lady, whose real name is Gladdy, used to be a nurse and believes Dylan’s ribs are broken. They want to get Dylan to a hospital, but Dylan refuses. Amber helps Dylan to his feet, and Jenna assists her, crying. Dylan holds onto Gladdy’s shopping cart, upsetting Gladdy. They take Dylan to the abandoned factory and rest him by the fire. Dylan shakes uncontrollably and asks for his sleeping bag, but Jenna informs him that it’s gone.
With Gladdy’s cursed-filled advice, Jenna and Amber find an old ottoman to prop Dylan against. Vulture approaches, along with two of the Bandana Kids. Vulture asks what happened and mocks Dylan’s condition. Vulture tells Jenna to get back to work, shoving her to the ground. He leaves, and Dylan tells a crying Jenna to just go back home. Jenna refuses and gives Dylan two white pills for his pain, sticking them in his mouth before he can refuse.
Amber leaves for a while, and Dylan is afraid of being alone without her. The drugs soon kick in, and Dylan watches the fire, tripping and hallucinating. He drifts to sleep.
In the morning, Dylan is in the most pain he’s ever been in. Amber tries to help him drink coffee, but it burns his busted lip and he recoils, which causes him even more pain. He asks for pills. Amber pulls some out, saying Jenna left them for him. Dylan takes them. Amber, nearly crying, tells Dylan he needs a doctor. Dylan concludes he must be in terrible condition for Amber to be so emotional. Once the pills take effect, Amber helps Dylan drink coffee and use the restroom. Dylan acknowledges that it’s Amber who is helping him, not Jenna.
For days, Dylan drifts in and out of drug-fogged consciousness. Gladdy bandages his ribs. He hears Jenna and Amber arguing over the drugs he’s taking. Finally, Ainsley is beside him. She tells him he can press charges if he goes to a hospital or the police, but she knows he won’t do either. She tells him he needs to get off the drugs. Dylan silently acknowledges that the drugs are working for shorter and shorter amounts of time.
One night, he wakes up to Amber helping him drink water. They have a conversation in which Amber reveals she knows most of the street people’s real names. Dylan admires that Amber treats everyone like normal people and asks for her real name, which she reveals is Faith. Amber says her mother also lived on the streets and died from addiction. Amber has Dylan feel the baby move in her stomach and vows to clean up her act when the baby comes.
Chapter 24 Summary
Dylan goes into withdrawal one night because Jenna didn’t bring him pills. Amber reassures Dylan that he isn’t dying and will feel better once the drugs leave his body. In the morning, Dylan manages to get up and stumbles out of the factory, searching for pills. He’s freezing and has no idea what day it is. He catches his reflection in a window and can see his swollen and bruised face. Behind him, a man throws away a half-eaten Danish, and Dylan digs it out and eats it.
After dragging himself up and down the streets, Dylan finds one of the Bandana Kids outside an arcade. The Bandana Kid tenses at first but then realizes Dylan isn’t a threat in this condition. Dylan asks him for pills. The Bandana Kid provides Dylan with one pill, then tells Dylan to meet him at seven.
Dylan finds his way to the library and relaxes into one of the chairs. He reaches for his backpack but remembers it’s gone. The pill kicks in, and he sits there for the rest of the afternoon. Before he leaves, he visits the washroom and is taken aback by how terrible he looks in the mirror.
When he leaves, he sees Glen. Dylan wants to run but knows he can’t. Glen offers to help Dylan find a doctor or shelter, but Dylan refuses. Glen can tell Dylan is high and warns him that it’s dangerous to take drugs from people on the street. Glen then shifts the topic to Twitch, informing Dylan that Twitch’s condition is declining. Glen tells Dylan about his own younger brother who lived on the streets and died of an overdose. Glen says it was his brother’s choice to continue to do drugs despite all the options and help he was given. This is why Glen pushed to open the school for street kids and donates his time and money. Glen urges Dylan to choose to accept help.
At the arcade, Dylan meets with the Bandana Kid, who gives Dylan more pills and invites him to a party. Dylan learns it’s New Year’s Eve and follows the kid to a nice apartment. There, Dylan takes more drugs and gets even higher, finding that he has no pain this way.
Vulture and Jenna arrive, and Dylan realizes he’s in Vulture’s apartment. Vulture tells Jenna she needs to get back to the streets, but she asks if she can talk to Dylan first. She warns Dylan not to have anything to do with Vulture. Dylan asks why Jenna doesn’t just go home, and she finally reveals that her dad sexually abused her. She is worried about her sister but too afraid to go home. Dylan asks why she traded that life for working the streets. Jenna says, “This doesn’t hurt as much” (210) and leaves to continue her work.
Chapter 25 Summary
The party continues for several days. Dylan is high the whole time. When the party finally ends, just Dylan, Jenna, and two of the Bandana Kids are left in Vulture’s apartment. Vulture arrives and tells Jenna to rest because she’s working that night and looks terrible. He orders the Bandana Kids to clean the apartment and invites Dylan out onto the balcony.
Vulture says that Dylan owes him for the pills, food, and beer. He suggests Dylan can work for him, indicating that Dylan could sell his body to make money. Vulture makes vague threats, and Dylan agrees to settle his debts. Back inside, Dylan looks for a vacuum cleaner but instead finds a storage room with his backpack and sleeping bag. He considers reclaiming them but decides to leave them, noting, “That life is over. This is my life now” (213). He finds some pills behind the couch and pockets them, but it makes him feel sick with himself.
He steals change from the pockets of the coats by the door for bus fare and starts to leave. One of the Bandana Kids tries to stop him, saying Dylan is supposed to stay and that Vulture will get his money no matter what. He reveals that Jenna got the pills from Vulture as part of a plan to get Dylan hooked. Dylan looks at Jenna, who buries her head in the couch in shame. Angry and betrayed, Dylan leaves.
Dylan gets off the bus in his old neighborhood. High from the pills, he destroys a snowman outside and staggers to his old house. Micha rushes up, excited to see him, but Dylan shoves him away, knocking Micha to the ground. He tries to apologize, but he’s too high to get the words out. His mother comes out and demands he leave, but Dylan makes a scene about how she can’t abandon her son and how she needs to give him money. Dan comes out and asks what’s going on. Dylan staggers out the door and vomits into the snow. Dan follows him out, saying Dylan won’t be allowed back if he returns drunk or stoned again. Dan realizes that he’s missing something and gives Dylan $10, saying Dylan should go clean himself up while Dan speaks with Dylan’s mom. Dylan says he won’t be back and asks Dan to apologize to Micha for him.
Chapters 22-25 Analysis
Chapters 22 through 25 exhibit a rapid shift in Dylan’s personality, standards, and morals. These shifts play into a greater theme about the gradual lowering of standards that is seen among the street kids in the novel. When Dylan first encounters Jenna after returning from Murdock, he is angry at her for selling her body on the streets. He predicted this outcome early on and attempted to rescue Jenna from Vulture before it came to this. However, once he is in debt to Vulture and dependent on the pills, Dylan doesn’t argue with Vulture about potentially working the streets.
The development of Dylan’s dependence on pills is a sharp deviation from his prior stance on drugs. Dylan likely would reject the drugs if he had a choice, but in his agony, he can barely speak. Jenna pushing the drugs into his mouth forces Dylan to experience the relief he gains from the drugs’ effects, hooking him on the sensation. His desire for the drugs extends beyond a need. He refers to them as “magic tablets” (199) and fights his pain to wander the streets, desperate for another fix after experiencing withdrawal for the first time.
During this meandering, Dylan grows even more desperate. He digs through the garbage for food and associates with one of the Bandana Kids, who are part of the reason for his initial pain. Dylan’s ability to care about these things is hindered by his need for a fix. He has become all the things he disdained earlier in the novel, like the people who dig through garbage, like the Garbage Man, and the people who debase themselves for a hit, like Twitch. Shortly after getting a pill from the Bandana Kid, Dylan mirrors another type of person he’s previously disdained: a weirdo in the public library. High, Dylan stares into nothing for hours, just like the people he sits with earlier in the novel. This fracturing of the person Dylan prided himself on being is a direct result of drug use.
These chapters also utilize irony to communicate Dylan’s change in behavior and attitude. Dylan spends a lot of the novel concerned about Jenna’s involvement with Vulture. However, at the party, it is Jenna who warns Dylan about being involved with Vulture. Dylan acknowledges this irony, saying, “Funny, my words, but they’re coming out of her mouth” (209). Irony also arises when Dylan visits his family. Throughout the novel, Dylan has worried about his brothers and about how they’re getting along with Dan. However, when Dylan returns home high, he destroys Micha’s snowman and shoves Micha to the ground in his stoned stupor. Now, instead of Dylan wanting to protect his brothers from Dan, Dan protects Micha and Jordan from Dylan. The destruction of the snowman, which could represent childhood innocence, symbolizes the destructive nature of drug use and its impact on those around the user.
These chapters are also full of character development and revelations. Many characters are humanized to Dylan beyond Dylan’s first impressions of them. The Swear Lady gets a name, and Amber’s knowledge of their names shows the care she feels for the other people on the streets despite her hard exterior. The Swear Lady, Gladdy, is revealed to be a former nurse, driving home the idea that anyone can end up on the street regardless of intelligence or success. Jenna reveals the sexual abuse she experienced at home, explaining her decision to live a hard street life instead of returning to her family. Glen reveals his connection to street life when he talks about his little brother’s addiction and subsequent death. This revelation finally explains Glen’s decisions to assist with the computer school and become involved with Dylan.
Both Glen and Ainsley urge Dylan to accept help and take advantage of the resources available to him. Glen and Ainsley understand how drugs can devastate a street kid, and they want to help Dylan before it’s too late. Dylan digs his feet in, however, and refuses to utilize any of the options available to him, like hospital care, shelters, or working for Glen. Drugs have reprogrammed Dylan’s brain to prioritize the next hit over anything else.
Jenna’s involvement in Dylan’s addiction is clear from the beginning of his drug abuse, but the revelation that this was the intended outcome and that Jenna was working with Vulture to get Dylan addicted comes as a plot twist. Dylan has put Jenna on a pedestal throughout the novel, seeing her as an angelic figure and a victim of circumstance. However, when Jenna gets Dylan addicted to drugs intentionally, the last shreds of his respect for her are demolished.
