“You have a strange name. I never met anyone named Avery. But that made it easier to find you, so thank you for having that name. Also, thank you for going to a school that posts pictures of field trips + uses FirstName.LastName@TheShipfieldSchool.org + gives students their own email. I don’t go to that kind of school.”

Right away, contrast is established between Bett Devlin and Avery Bloom, and yet a certain kindness informs the way Bett thanks Avery for who she is. This foreshadows how such seeming opposites will become friends, sisters, and even a team. The epistolary form also allows Bett’s personality to emerge through her writing style, such as using a plus sign instead of the word “and”; Avery is more formal and always spells words out.

“If we really do have to go to this camp, we will just never speak to each other, which shouldn’t be hard because we don’t have anything in common and we don’t know each other at all. I guess if I could be any animal it would be a night owl.”

Avery and Bett bond, ironically, over planning how not to become friends with each other. They don’t realize this is occurring, insisting that they don’t know each other even as they share more and more about themselves. Here, for example, they explain which animal they would most like to be, illustrating that they actually do feel a connection to each other. This discussion of animals lays the foundation for the girls’ future code names for each other; closeness develops in stages over time.

“Marlow and I should have done more research (you know how much WE both like doing that, but not everyone is like us). Marlow is really a ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants’ kind of guy. Which is sometimes great. And sometimes, well, not so great.”

The differences between Marlow Devlin and Sam Bloom mirror the differences between Avery and Bett: The Blooms like research and planning, whereas the Devlins are spontaneous.