The Strangers

“He wanted everybody to laugh. He needed everybody to laugh.”

Like many young kids, Finn doesn’t understand “adult” problems. His mother is always cheerful as far as he knows, so when she is distracted by a news story, his main priority is to restore normalcy. He uses humor to do it, like he always has. As long as his mother laughs at his antics, the problem is solved. He associates laughter and humor with routine, so when he perceives his mother is upset, he makes a joke so she would “forget those other kids; she would bring out snacks and ask Finn and Emma and Chess about school. Just like usual” (15).

“She didn’t even sound like Mom now. She sounded cold and mean and cutting.”

Much of the kids’ recognition that something is wrong comes from changes in their mother’s behavior. When Chess eavesdrops on her conversation with Joe, her angry tone signals that the problem may be more serious than an anonymous kidnapping halfway across the country. Haddix’s choice of descriptors implies not only conflict but something altogether sinister. For a child to perceive his mother as “cold” and “mean” is shocking, especially if she is usually warm and loving. 

“Finn saw Chess’s face change, as if someone had flipped a switch. One moment, he looked groggy and sad—and just wrong, with those circles under his eyes…The next moment Chess had a goofy grin plastered on his face, but even that felt wrong.” 

Chess, disturbed by his mother’s phone conversation the night before, doesn’t sleep well, and Finn notices. He sees through his older brother’s playful façade to something deeper. While he can’t put a name to it, his instincts tell him that something is wrong. In fact, his powers of observation go beyond his five senses to an empathetic perception—he “feels” something is wrong. Perhaps his youth endows him with such perception, a gift older kids have lost or don’t acknowledge.

“It felt like Chess, Emma, and Finn should have known all along that those other kids existed.” 

As Emma tries to calculate the odds of three other kids with identical names and birthdays, she ponders the possibility of a deeper psychic connection. She feels she should have intuited immediately that the other Emma was in danger, the way some twins report similar bonds with each other. To Emma’s logical brain, patterns must align for the world to make sense, and a link with the Gustano children is part of that pattern.

“None of those details are things I can count, Emma told herself. But with things that are numbers, like height and weight, I could throw those into the equation if I wanted to calculate the odds of those kids having so much in common with us, and…”

The process of quantifying similarities and differences between her siblings and the Gustanos becomes a frustrating rabbit hole for Emma. For every potential variable she can measure, a hundred others emerge that she can’t. For Emma, however, this is not an insolvable problem, but only one that requires more time and higher-level math skills. Math has never failed her up until now, and she still has faith in its infallibility.

“She could be any mother anywhere in the world, saying goodbye to her kids headed to school any day of the week.” 

The plot of the novel works like an elaborate puzzle, full of “what ifs” and “should haves.” Change a single action, and everything is altered further down the road. Second-guessing is futile, but the characters can’t help themselves. Chess, trying to find slivers of normalcy in a very abnormal day, imagines this moment—his mother sending them off to school—as just like any other moment in any other day. It’s the only way he can reconcile what he suspects is trouble looming on the horizon.

“Dad probably would have been able to give him all sorts of advice about how to talk to girls.” 

Although it’s been eight years since his father died, the grief still resurfaces. When Chess discovers that Ms. Morales’s daughter is Natalie Mayhew, Lip Gloss Girl, he flounders in a sea of pubescent angst. Recalling an incident the year before in which a scornful comment from Natalie left him speechless, he yearns for a father-son conversation, one that will clarify for him the turbulent challenges of adolescence in a way only a father can.

“Those were the most comforting things Emma could think of. They were constants.” 

In light of Kate’s final text message hinting that she may never see her kids again, Emma falls back on her usual coping mechanism: numbers. Square roots and prime numbers are mathematical constants, unwavering and steadfast, unlike the situation she finds herself in. Tossed about like a tiny raft in a stormy sea, math is the only solid purchase Emma can find.

“It was like the Boring Room made Mom not-Mom.” 

Ever the logical one, Emma still has moments of irrationality. She admits to being a little afraid of the Boring Room, Kate’s basement office, not because it’s dark or spooky, but because her mother’s behavior seems different there—secretive and guarded—and for Emma, “different” is unsettling. Little does she know the full extent of the strangeness of that room and why her mother is so reticent about allowing the kids access to it. The room is the gateway to the other world, one of doppelgängers and bizarre dangers, and so Emma’s perception of her mother as something—or someone—other is more accurate than she knows. 

“Natalie was acting like this was her problem, too. And it wasn’t.” 

The stress of looking for their mother blinds the Greystone kids to the help Natalie offers. Like many kids who strive to appear older than their age to fit in with the big kids, Chess, Emma, and Finn resent what they perceive as Natalie’s interference when, in fact, she is only trying to help. Perhaps Natalie has forgotten what it’s like to be eight or ten, and therefore her offers of assistance come off as condescending. However, she proves to be an asset.

“Only Mom and Chess had ever looked at Finn that way: as though they really saw him, and understood that even though Finn could be loud and noisy and silly, he wasn’t just loud and noisy and silly.” 

Finn wants to desperately to help in the search for his mother, but his youth prevents him from making any valuable contribution. Even though Natalie dismisses him, Chess understands how important it is to his younger brother that he be allowed to participate. Unlike Natalie, Chess sees Finn in a way that only an older sibling can, with empathy and understanding born of being bound together by blood and trauma. While Natalie looks for efficiency and speed, Chess seeks inclusion. 

“Had Mom been preparing Emma? Even way back last fall, had Mom been worried that some danger was coming, and she wanted Emma to be ready for it by learning about codes?” 

As Emma plumbs her own cognitive depths trying to decode her mother’s letter, she wonders whether her mother’s suggestion that she might enjoy learning about codes was actually a deliberate strategy to groom her for this very task. Did she have such foresight, or was she simply indulging her daughter’s love of numbers, Emma wonders. All of the kids’ thoughts begin to veer into wild speculation at this point, but Emma, the most cerebral of the three, engages in some of the most speculative notions.

“But he liked how steady her voice stayed. He liked that she was older than him and knew things he didn’t.” 

Chess spends so much emotional energy trying to protect his siblings and himself that he is grateful to cede some of that responsibility to Natalie. Imagining how much stress the other Chess must be feeling also adds to his own, and, without his mother to assume some of the burden, Natalie becomes the next best thing. It also marks the first time Chess is able to trust the former Lip Gloss Girl rather than see her as an adversary. For her part, Natalie, constantly under her mother’s scrutiny, seems happy to take charge on occasion. 

“But even the air seemed to be conspiring against her, making her think otherwise.” 

Stepping out of the abandoned house into the alternate world for the first time, Emma immediately notices something strange about the air, something that will prove to be more sinister than she initially thinks. Worse than simple smog or smoke, the air, described as “foul,” “nasty,” and “evil,” seems to have some kind of mind control power, deadening the population into subservient sheep. While Haddix never fully explains the air in the alternate universe, its effects are palpable to anyone from the other side. The air from their own world, however, seems to have a similarly disorienting effect on the guards from the dystopian world, confusing them enough to allow Natalie, the Greystones, and the Gustanos to escape.

“Some people hide things better than others.”

Ms. Morales’s simple declaration iterates a consistent theme running through the novel: secrecy. Kate’s ability to keep secrets is crucial for her and her family’s safety. Ms. Morales, in her other capacity as a private investigator, works to uncover and expose secrets, although her work also gives her a unique understanding of the need for such secrecy. Her assumption that Kate Greystone is hiding from an abusive boyfriend is misguided, but that assumption compels her to take necessary precautions when shepherding the Greystone kids around. Transparency is usually seen as a virtue, but in the case of Kate and her children, that is exactly what they must avoid.

“‘Finn comes with us,’ Emma said, stepping between her brothers. ‘We don’t leave him behind.’”

Chess’s efforts to exclude Finn from the nightly investigations meet with a defiant Emma. Chess’s intentions are honorable, but he underestimates his younger brother’s desire for inclusion and agency in the search for their mother, a desire Emma understands fully and feels compelled to remind her older brother of. She argues for strength in numbers and familial cohesion, an argument with which Chess ultimately agrees.

“For her, their dad was like the unknown in a math problem that you didn’t have to solve for.” 

Emma makes sense of her world by fitting everything neatly into a math analogy, including her father. For Chess, their dad is more known than unknown, at least in the shadows of his memory. Emma, who was too young to remember him when he died, conceptualizes him as a variable, albeit one for which she knows the value. She can’t remember physical details or events, but she feels the ripple effects of his presence years after his death in both Chess and her mother.

“Before Mom went away, he’d just done whatever he wanted, mostly without thinking. But now, he always had to ask himself, Am I acting like myself?” 

For most of his life, his mother indulged Finn’s impetuous behavior, valuing its simple joy and exuberance. In her absence, however, Finn begins to evaluate his actions, deciding when and where that impetuousness is appropriate. He never had to make those kinds of self-evaluations before, but he deems them necessary if he wants to be seen by Natalie and his siblings as mature enough to help. Although these self-reflections are a necessary part of the maturation process, Finn abandons them in moments of emotional crisis and reverts to his usual spontaneity. 

“Having Ms. Morales watch him and Natalie now—and dart behind the drape so he didn’t see her—just scared him more.” 

As Finn waits for the school bus, he notices Ms. Morales watching from her front window and then furtively duck behind the curtains. With so many secrets left to uncover, Finn begins to see them everywhere. Ms. Morales’s behavior, perhaps perfectly innocent, fills him with suspicion. Grown-ups are the protectors; they’re not supposed to feel fear. The danger must be extra serious if even Ms. Morales is afraid. The mystery spins Finn’s mind into a vortex of paranoia, although, to be fair, missing parents and cryptic messages would disturb anyone, young or old.

“Even exhausted and discouraged and scared, she wasn’t going to start treating something like a fact if she wasn’t sure.” 

Obsessively trying to decode her mother’s letter, Emma tries to take inspiration from Thomas Edison and other inventors whose many failures, she argues, ultimately paved the way for future successes. The thought of thousands of failed attempts, however, are cold comfort when her mother’s life may be on the line. Still, she is determined to get it right and not jump to conclusions. Her mathematical brain teaches her to be patient and examine all variables, and she clings to that belief even though her emotional side is panicking and imagining time running out. 

“Was there anything more annoying than big kids and adults telling little kids they weren’t old enough to know something?” 

When Kate’s letter instructs the kids not to follow her “[b]ecause it’s too late” (254), Chess and Emma deem the news too dire to share with Finn. Finn, on the other hand, wants to prove he’s old enough to handle it. It’s the plight of little kids everywhere—being told they’re too young, being excluded because of their age, and being talked down to. Finn isn’t the only one who feels this way either. Even Emma experiences it, exploding at Natalie, “’We know what alternate worlds are!’” (240) when she feels the older teenager assumes ignorance on their part.

“Still, it was a smell that beckoned Emma forward, as if a smell could whisper, Come see. You have to find the source, to destroy it. So you don’t have to live with this forever.”

The air in the alternate world has a strange, ill-defined power on the minds of those who breathe it. It lulls the populace into complacency, but, for Emma, it is alluring and deceptive. Perhaps it whispers to everyone in the other world, and that is the source of its power. Whatever its true nature, the air seems to play upon Emma’s fear and desire. It knows how unnerving she finds it, and it lures her deeper into the world with the false promise of a problem that she can solve.

“The leaders can destroy anyone they want that way, by controlling what people see and hear, so they only get lies.” 

Information manipulation is the tool used by the authoritarian leadership to convince the people that the truth is what the government says it is, and that the leadership has only the citizens’ best interests at heart. Parallels to the U.S. and Europe in the 21st century are easy to draw here. Accusations of “fake news” and demonization of any media or person that dares criticize the government have helped many political leaders create an environment in which up is down, truth is fiction, and the entire world is one vast conspiracy bent on taking down the one remaining icon of courage and virtue.