Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of suicide, incest, sexual abuse of children and minors, anti-gay violence, and alcohol abuse.

“I wait for my heart to start beating again, for my lungs to start working again. I wait for control of my body to return to me because I don’t know who has control of it right now.”

Holder works throughout the novel to gain control of his emotions, which often present themselves through his physical body. Whether it is his clenched fists trying to keep from fighting Grayson or his attempts to control his urges toward Sky, Hoover portrays Holder’s emotions through his physical being to signify when Holder does not yet have the power of verbal self-expression.

“I realize that the very best part of me is dead.”

Holder sees Les, being his twin sister, as a part of him. When he finds her body after she dies by suicide, he is at his lowest point of the novel. Beginning the story with Holder having lost all hope allows Sky’s emergence in his life to make a powerful difference, epitomizing the fact that the novel traces his character development.

“I’m so sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see what was really going on behind your eyes every time you told me you were fine.”

Holder writes these words in a letter to Les when he finds a notebook on her bedroom floor the morning of her funeral. Holder always sensed that Les carried emotional pain that she kept from him, and this first mention of it foreshadows the end of the novel when he finds out that she was molested by Hope’s father.