58 pages • 1 hour read
Philip BeardDear Zoe
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 26-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “Travis Chills Out”
By mid-July, Tess suspects her dad knows that she and Jimmy hang out together at the park, but he doesn’t say anything. A heatwave hits in the park, and Travis reappears at the lemonade stand looking terrible, “like a dead body that had been dug up” (137). He is sexually inappropriate with Vicky, pulling his jeans down to reveal a line of pubic hair, and Vicky baits him into chugging a frozen lemonade for the prize of riding on a tunnel ride with her or Tess. Travis gets an intense headache from the cold and screams and threatens to kill Tess and Vicky. Jimmy, drawn by the screaming, holds Travis back and tells him to leave or he’ll call security, asking if he’s still on parole. Jimmy tells Vicky and Tess to watch out for him, and they lock up the lemonade stand and leave work early.
Chapter 27 Summary: “The Whip”
One day Tess is walking back from lunch with Jimmy, a little stoned, when she spots David and Em in “Lost Kennywood,” the section of park where all the old rides are. David and Em are on a ride called The Whip, and seeing them, Tess feels like they’ve “crossed over into this other world I’d created for myself” (143). David says he didn’t realize Tess worked at Kennywood, and Em stares at the ground. David suggests they stop by Thelma’s for a lemonade, and Tess says she’ll let Em help her serve people. David tells Tess her mother is getting better and invites her for dinner, but Tess says she has plans with friends. Tess promises Em she’ll call soon. Em is noticeably upset, but as they walk away, David tickles her neck, trying to lighten her mood. Tess leaves work early, so she doesn’t know if David and Em stop by the lemonade stand or not.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Fast-Forward”
The heat breaks, and summer smarts moving quickly. On August 7, Tess notices a headline about September 11 tributes. She stops watching television because everything focuses on the War of Terror, not on small deaths like Zoe’s. Her dad disappears more often in the evenings, and David and Em don’t return to the park. Vicky continues to hook up with customers and asks Tess if she’s “doing Jimmy,” saying if Tess won’t someone else will, and Tess wonders if Vicky is talking about herself.
Tess begins to look forward to her phone calls with her mother, but she is more worried about Em, who refuses to go to second grade because her old teacher left and she’s worried her new teacher will do the same. Em refuses to get on the
phone with Tess.
Tess falls more in love with Jimmy, and he doesn’t act afraid. Tess feels it’s the best summer of her life, but she also says it’s “hard to feel right about that” (148).
Chapters 26-28 Analysis
Travis’s reappearance both highlights and undercuts the danger of Tess living with her father. On the one hand, Travis is sexually threatening and frightening, traits Bears describes with vivid visual vivid imagery. He poses a threat to Tess’s safety. On the other hand, the scene with Travis ends comically when Tess and Vicky, Tess’s sexually promiscuous colleague, trick him into drinking a frozen lemonade that gives him a painful headache. The scene suggests two opposing ideas at once: that Tess’s father’s lifestyle is potentially dangerous, but also that Tess is capable of handling the danger. Metaphorically, Travis is the personification of Tess’s dad’s drug-dealing business, and his return—as if from the dead—suggests that Tess’s father’s business is far from over and in fact foreshadows Tess’s dad’s arrest. Furthermore, Jimmy addresses Travis by name and admits to knowing him, hinting at Jimmy’s involvement with Tess’s father’s business.
David and Em appear, significantly, in the Lost Kennywood section of the park, as though they themselves are a relic of Tess’s past life. Tess spots them riding The Whip, a ride whose back-and-forth motion echoes the “Z” of Zoe’s life, as well as the back-and-forth structure of the novel. Tess’s reunion with David and Em is painful in that Em gives Tess the silent treatment, and Tess feels like she’s living a different life at Kennywood. The painful run-in with David and Em represents a tension for Tess: Her life at her father’s is full of happiness, but Tess knows that no matter how long she stays away, she’s still contributed to her family’s sadness. Her absence doesn’t make David and Em’s pain go away, nor does it restore the “part missing from both of them, a part I helped take away and couldn’t put back” (145). Tess conceives of this missing part as Zoe but fails to understand herself as a missing part of their family unit as well. Tess’s absence is deeply felt by Em, David, and her mother.
As the end of summer approaches and the anniversary of September 11 draws closer, Tess feels more anxiety about Zoe’s death. Nevertheless, her family seems to be improving, including her Mom, whom she speaks to regularly on the phone. Em is a notable exception: She refuses to speak to Tess on the phone, suggesting that she’s still feeling upset and abandoned by Tess’s decision to live with her dad. Tess continues to fall deeply in love with Jimmy, and she acknowledges that part of the reason she loves him is because it “felt good to feel something extreme that wasn’t sadness” (148). In this way, falling in love with Jimmy offers Tess escape from the intensity of her grief. She feels guilt over enjoying herself so much and feels it might even be morally wrong. This sort of internal conflict is symptomatic of grief and representative of the experience of many.
