Crank

Adam has the apartment to himself as his mother is at work. Kristina and Adam hang out in his living room, where he smokes a cigarette. Kristina tries a drag for the first time in her life.

Kristina is acutely aware that Adam wants to kiss her. She wants to kiss him as well but is scared. Adam finally kisses her. Kristina feels this is the moment that changed her life forever.

Just like the popular saying, Kristina will always remember her first kiss. The kiss is lovelier than she expected. Adam treats her with respect, demanding little in return.

Adam and Kristina meet secretly all week long behind Lynx’s back. Kristina goes with Adam to the bowling alley on Sunday.

Kristina’s view of the bowling alley has changed. She is now part of the inside crowd, looking to find a backroom party, rather than judging others for attending such parties. She wonders if she has stolen Adam from Lynx.

One’s choices determine the course of one’s life. While Kristina thinks it is unwise to let her more reckless instincts rule, Bree chooses to invite the demons in.

Kristina tries to justify her next actions to the reader. She had been through an emotional rollercoaster that week. She found herself disenchanted with the father she once idolized. Falling in love with Adam had been her only solace. So, when Adam asked her to smoke marijuana with him, she could not refuse. However, marijuana makes her sleepy, and she wanted something that provides more of a “high.”

It turns out that Kristina’s father and Adam already know each other. Kristina is surprised when her father discusses the availability of marijuana with Adam in front of her. Adam tells Kristina’s father she is safe with him. After her father gets called for work, Adam suggests they go to the backroom again to party. He pulls up a mirror and some crank, or meth, using a razor blade to cut and draw the drug into lines. He offers Kristina a straw to snort the crank, promising her it will “make [her] want to fly all night” (87).

Kristina compares the minutes before she first consumed drugs to riding the tallest roller coaster ever. Waiting for the roller coaster to make the drop from the peak, hesitating a little because this marks the point of no return, is the final second before “you / shake hands with the / monster” (89).

When Kristina inhales the meth, she feels an intense burning sensation in her nose. She feels the powder hit her bloodstream and travel to her heart and brain, the surge of energy making her feel euphoric and uninhibited.

Though she’s experiencing intense sensations, Kristina pretends to be nonchalant and cool. Adam asks her how she is feeling. To avoid an answer, Kristina kisses him. Adam suggests she consume another line.

The second time, the meth does not hurt Kristina’s nostrils as much. The high is such that she feels she is very close to “the gates / of heaven” (94). Adam begins to touch her, perhaps to lead her to heavenly ecstasy, but they do not go “all the way” (94).

Kristina wonders what “all the way” means (95). In the commonly understood sense, it means having penetrative sex. Would having sex with Adam be an act of “defilement”?

Kristina and Adam’s lovemaking is not an act of defilement. Adam is gentle and persuasive. Kristina enjoys the consensual touching until she hears voices outside the door.

Her father is looking for Kristina and calls out for her and Adam. Adam, who knows Kristina as Bree, asks her in confusion, “Who’s Kristina?” (96).

Kristina finds Adam’s question so funny she bursts out laughing. Her father hears her voice and bursts in. Kristina finds that she does not care about being found out.

Lynx enters the room with Kristina’s father, demanding to know what Adam and Kristina have been doing. Adam lies and says that he and Kristina have not been intimate. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Lynx seems to believe him. Lynx asks Adam to fix her a line of meth.

Kristina snorts a line as well. She knows something is very wrong about her consuming meth with Adam, his other girlfriend, and Kristina’s own father.

As everyone begins to talk, Kristina notes to herself that the monster loosens inhibitions so that people reveal their deepest secrets under its influence.

Kristina’s father reveals he wants to have sex with his boss. Adam says the boss is very attractive and he would like a threesome with her and Kristina’s father. Uncomfortable with the talk, Kristina gets up, hoping Adam will stop her. However, Adam is too high to notice her leaving.

An angry Kristina steps out of the bowling alley. Still feeling partly euphoric from the meth, she runs down a side street.

The night is beautiful, but Kristina soon finds herself in a crowded part of town where she feels like she stands out like a sore thumb.

The drug causes her to feel overwhelmed by the lights and sounds. Kristina does not know which way to head. Three men in football jackets surround her.

Sensing she may be in danger, Kristina plays it cool. She tries to get away from the men, but they correctly guess that she has been using drugs. Feeling emboldened by this, the men push her into a doorway.

The men sexually assault Kristina, ripping off her clothes. She is traumatized and afraid.

Adam appears on the scene, telling the men what they are doing is wrong. He points out a police car two blocks away and threatens to report the men.

The men release Kristina and run away. Kristina is shaking with fear. Adam hugs her as the patrol car approaches them. He tells her to compose herself so the officers won’t question whether she has been consuming drugs. The officers pass by without comment.

Kristina holds on to Adam’s shirt tightly as they walk home. Her father is still not back from the alley. Adam stays with Kristina, and they spend the night smoking and talking. Kristina tells Adam about her parents and stepfather. She learns that Adam’s mother is a single parent and his brother died of a drug overdose.

As dawn breaks, Kristina and Adam confess their love for each other. Kristina feels her shattered trust in Adam being rebuilt.

Kristina’s father returns, looking as if he has been using drugs all night. After Adam leaves, Kristina’s father asks her if she and Adam have been intimate since “a girl could get / into real trouble” (122). Kristina wonders why her father was absent when she needed him the previous night.

Her father goes to sleep, and Kristina thinks about the previous night. She remembers the exhilarating highs but feels depressed at the prospect of leaving Adam.

Unable to sleep with her racing thoughts, Kristina cleans the floors and scrubs the dishes. She writes a letter to her sister, telling her about falling in love. She composes a darkly funny poem for her mom and drinks beer.

After drinking four beers, Kristina watches TV for six hours straight, pitying the people on The Jerry Springer Show, whose lives seem far worse than hers. She is hungry and sleepy, but the aftereffects of the meth won’t let her eat or sleep. She slumps over on the couch.

As the drug wears off and the alcohol kicks in, Kristina finally falls asleep while watching The Jerry Springer Show.

Twenty hours later, an incessant banging on the door wakes Kristina up. It is Adam. Kristina senses something terrible has happened.

Kristina tells Adam she is coming to the door. She rushes to the bathroom to freshen up and is shocked to see her worn face in the mirror. She thinks she looks like neither Kristina nor Bree, but a monster.

Kristina dunks her head in cold water, trying to exorcize the monster.

Kristina opens the door. A crying Adam tells her Lynx either jumped or fell off the balcony earlier that day.

After Kristina’s father came home, Adam had left their apartment. Lynx confronted him about spending the night with Kristina. She asked Adam to let go of Kristina, but Adam told Lynx he could not. Lynx became sad and angry and swore she would get back at Adam. She jumped or fell off the balcony and was taken to the hospital.

Kristina and Adam hug. Adam wonders if he could have stopped Lynx from jumping. Kristina tells him that what happened was not his fault, but hers. Adam disagrees. Kristina pictures Lynx lying crumpled up on the sidewalk.

Confused and sad, Kristina and Adam go over the incident repeatedly, kissing each other for comfort. When Adam asks Kristina to go see Lynx in the hospital with him, Kristina agrees against her better judgment.

Kristina and Adam go to the hospital. To see Lynx, Adam lies to the nurse and says that he is her brother and Kristina his fiancé. Adam and Kristina are allowed to see Lynx in the intensive care unit.

Lynx is asleep, attached to many tubes. Kristina goes to the waiting room to give Adam privacy with Lynx. In the waiting room, Kristina craves a bath, Adam’s reassurances, and her mother. All these unmet needs make her want a line.

By the time Adam and Kristina leave the hospital, it is almost night. They walk home in silence. Adam does not kiss her at her doorstep but says goodbye. Kristina wonders if he is bidding her farewell forever.