96 pages • 3 hours read
Matthew QuickBoy21
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 26–28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary
Finley and his teammates watch Erincarry her team to victory against Pennsville, while Wes and Boy21 read Harry Potter. It is hard for Finley not to be in love with Erin, but he is also sick with worry about his game. “There’s a small section of Irish who’ve come to root for Erin” (134), but they also root for Finley. Boy21 seems oddly calm, but Finley is deeply distracted by Erin’s presence.
Once they start playing, Finley becomes too nervous to take shots; even when he does take shots, he misses them. Finley calls a timeout, and Coach sees he’s rattled, so he subs Russ in for Finley. Finley feels like an embarrassment. Russ is hesitant, then asks Finley if he should use his powers to win the game. Everyone is confused, but Finley tells him it’s fine. Russ checks in with an exasperated Coach, and then turns on his game, taking a beautiful half-court jump shot. The team and crowd are both wild with excitement, and the Pennsville coach is furious. Russ leaves all other players in the dust, and by half-time, his teammates are pelting him with questions.
In the locker room, Russ explains Boy21 to his teammates, who are first stunned into silence, then decide he’s messing with them, while Terrell says he knows Russ is crazy. Finley feels terrible.
After they win the game, a few reporters come up and talk to Russ, who again reverts to Boy21. “[A] deliriously happy mob has formed” (145), but Finley can’t handle the celebration and slips out to the track to run laps. Erin comes out to tell him to get back inside before Coach kicks him off the team for leaving. She says that the only reason Coach didn’t let him play was because he wasn’t taking shots, and to stop “acting like a baby” (146). Finley goes back inside, and Coach talks about areas of improvement, standing between Boy21—whom he does not acknowledge or even mention—and the rest of the team. Afterwards, Coach talks to Finley, reiterating what Erin had explained. Finley expresses worry about Russ’s mental stability, which Coach brushes off, making Finley worry more.
Chapter 27 Summary
After the game, Finley walks home alone. He is intercepted by Terrell and Mike, who is smoking a joint in his expensive car. They tell him they’ll drive him home. Terrell asks how crazy Russ is, and Finley says he doesn’t know. They talk some more, and Mike says that Finley’s a good person. Mike asks if he needs money and offers Finley a job, which Finley declines.
At home, Finley’s grandfather tells him not to feel bad, because “[y]ou could work as hard as you humanly can for the rest of your life and you’ll never be as good as what we saw tonight” (153). Finley bathes his grandfather. His grandfather tries to reassure him, saying that Finley is special, too, even though Finley disagrees. Finley lies awake all night thinking.
Chapter 28 Summary
On the way to school, Boy21dons a bathrobe made of safety-pinned towels, a sparkly gold cape, and a silver motorcycle helmet topped with an eagle. Russ says that he will only be referred to as Boy21 from now on, and that he will leave Earth soon. He asks Finley to listen to a CD with him after school that “will explain everything” (156). Finley worries that Russ has lost it.
At school, Boy21 is mobbed by student attention, and Finley feels invisible. Boy21 makes announcements about his basketball game and extraterrestrial powers, but most students laugh, assuming he’s joking. This exchange continues throughout the day. Adults, including the previous night’s reporters, ignore Boy21’s costume and bizarre behavior. At lunch, Boy21 and Finley go to their respective counselors’ offices.
Mr. Gore uses Russ’s history to try to get Finley to speak about his own troubled past, including the death of his mother and his grandfather’s loss of his legs. Finley refuses to talk, so Mr. Gore asks him what they should do about Russ, and whether Finley is upset. Finley again refuses to engage, and Mr. Gore offers to listen if Finley ever does want to talk. Mr. Gore ends by saying that Finley should tell Russ about the death of Finley’s mother.
Russ catches up with Finley, and tells him that the adults want him to stop wearing his “outer-space clothes” (161), with which Finley disagrees. Russ offers to get another outfit for Finley, which makes Finley smile and forget about his conversation with Mr. Gore. They go to practice, and afterwards Boy21, Wes, and Finley go to the Allens’ house to listen to Boy21’souter-space CD. They eat dinner with the Allens, who are worried about Boy21’s re-emergent outer-space preoccupation, and who steer the conversation back to basketball.
The boys go upstairs, and Boy21 tells them he used to listen to this CD, Space Is the Place, with his father. Wes is hesitant, but they lie down on the floor with the lights off and listen to the odd chanting and bizarre pulsating noises of the new-age jazz compilation. Finley realizes that “the whole record is about black culture and how it might thrive more easily in the cosmos” (166). The situation makes Wes uncomfortable, and it is worsened when Boy21 starts to explain his plans for space travel. Wes and Finley walk home, and Wes expresses his concern for Russ. They are interrupted by Rod who says Erin is in the hospital. Mr. Allen drives the boys to the hospital, and Finley feels sick
Chapters 26–28 Analysis
Finley’s anxiety gets the best of him, and he can no longer use basketball as a form of escape. Instead, basketball makes Finley feel impotent and outofcontrol. Pop reminds Finley that basketball is a transient and fickle method of escape; Finley can only work so hard before people who are simply more talented, like Russ, outshine him. In this way, basketball exists as a metonym for the town of Bellmont as a whole, in which one can work his entire life and still be left with barely enough money to scrape by. Defeated, Finley withdraws into himself, becoming almost invisible, much like he was at the beginning of the novel.
These chapters present the lack of options available in Bellmont, showcasing the true depth of the town’s poverty. In Bellmont, the options are either to work within the law and remain impoverished, scraping to get by, or to work outside of it, making quick and flashy money via violence: one can either be a drug dealer/gangster or a blue-collar worker; there is no in-between. Finley does not like either of these options, which implies that he must leave in order to pursue his future.
These chapters also present the power of secrecy via the characters of Russ and Finley. In the small town of Bellmont, secrets beget power. Russ’s secret abilities seem almost like magic, allowing him to don the persona of Boy21 in public. In contrast, Finley feels impotent because of his incompetence in basketball and so he continues to refuse to speak about his past as a method of exerting control over an increasingly uncontrollable environment.
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