Tell Me Three Things

Adjusting to a new high school is daunting in and of itself, but Jessie has to adapt to the completely foreign “jungle” of Wood Valley while also processing “all the stagnant, soul-crushing grief” (278) of losing her mother and making space for her new stepfamily. The language Jessie uses to describe her grief characterizes it as something all-consuming, overshadowing everything and leaving little space for other emotions. Even two years after her death, Jessie is unable to think about her mother “in a way that doesn't make [her] keel over” (37), and she is convinced that “time does not heal all wounds, no matter how many drugstore sympathy cards hastily scrawled by distant relatives promise this to be true” (9).

The trauma of her mother's death makes her especially anxious, and she cannot help but feel like everything in her life is tenuous. After Bill's fight with Rachel, Jessie momentarily convinces herself that he returned to Chicago without her because “when the worst thing you could possibly imagine happens to you, you think maybe other previously inconceivably bad things can happen too” (135). She logically knows, of course, that her father would never do such a thing, but the immense grief isolates her and traps her in a sphere of fear and uncertainty.

Jessie recognizes these intense negative emotions but hardly lets herself feel them; she rarely allows herself to cry, viewing it as a sign of weakness (7). In the beginning of the novel, Jessie physically moves forward in time, but with a numbness that keeps her from being fully present. She recognizes this type of absence in Ethan—"physically locatable [...] but not there at all” (105)—which she later uncovers is the manifestation of grief of losing his brother. They both count the days that have passed since their loved ones died as a coping mechanism, but it also is a constant reminder of their loss. They find comfort in this shared practice, and as their relationship deepens, they begin to lean on each other for support and help each other validate and process their grief, which is exactly what Jessie needed in a friend after moving to LA. 

Jessie and Ethan know that they are not the same people they were before their loved ones died, and their parallel experiences allow them to understand each other in a way that their other friends cannot: Jessie believes they are both “burdened with the realization that what goes on [their minds] is somehow different from what goes on in everyone else's. Even those closest to [them]” (253). Grief tremendously isolated Jessie and Ethan from those around them (253), but it is also what allowed them to connect with each other so deeply and begin to move forward and “feel” again.

As Jessie narrates her tumultuous experiences, every so often they are peppered with moments of hope and normalcy: when chatting with SN, Liam, Ethan, and Scar simultaneously, the fact that she has made friends and has people to talk to serves as “proof that maybe [she's] starting to have something resembling a life again” (119). Heading to Gem's party, Jessie feels “like a normal teenage girl headed to a normal party on a normal Saturday night,” and is able to momentarily take off her “top-secret grief backpack” that she is always carrying (155). The backpack symbolizes the grief that Jessie carries through most of her days, weighing her down. Though she never says she is able to take it off and leave it behind entirely, the fact that she begins to heal and find her place in LA suggests that she can take it off with more frequency, and that, perhaps, it begins to get lighter.

Jessie is deeply enveloped in her own feelings of loss and grief but realizes at various points that she is not the only one navigating those emotions. She shares some rare moments of vulnerability with Theo and Rachel that demonstrate how painful the loss of Theo's father still is, despite the privileged, seemingly perfect lives they have. At first, Jessie refuses to acknowledge them as new family members, calling them “the Others,” and she cannot bring herself to call their house her new “home.” Eventually, she and Theo can move past their resentment and grow to genuinely care for one another. The relationship Jessie begins to build with Rachel is one that is going to take more time, and is admittedly “tricky,” but Rachel is confident that the two will “get there” (312). 

Despite the collective loss that Jessie, her father, and the Scotts have endured, filling the house with resentment, pain, and “bad juju,” as Theo says, with time, they all become more willing to accept each other's new roles in their lives, creating “a house of starting over” and new beginnings (312). Jessie was convinced that moving back to Chicago, what she considered to be her real home, would be the solution to the new uncertainties of her life, but after visiting, she realizes that everyone has begun to move forward: “in some ways, moving back would just be moving backward” (304).

The memories of her mother and life “before” “are portable” (304); they are not innately bound to Chicago, and she can carry them with her as she moves forward in life, regardless of her physical location. Jessie begins to understand that SN/Ethan is right: that “home doesn't have to be a place” (275)—it is in the people who love you, which Jessie does find for herself in LA. After facing the disappointment that Chicago did not hold all of the answers, admitting that Scarlett has also had to move on, and realizing that she has created meaningful relationships in California despite all of her doubts, Jessie reaches a point in her healing where she no longer feels like she needs to escape: “for first time in as long as [she] can remember, [she feels] like [she's] exactly where [she wants] to be” (324).