Julia urges Jason to go to the Black Swan Green Village Disco, even though he is terrified that Neal Brose and his defenders will be waiting for him there, eager to punish him for his act of vigilante justice in school that day. And the dance does not go as Jason expects, in a number of ways. Among the unexpected high points of this evening, Jason checks off a classic rite of passage for a young person coming of age--his "first kiss," which he enjoys in the storage room in the company of Holly Deblin (who is so much cooler than Dawn Madden!). When their lips finally unlock, Holly reminisces about Jason's dramatic performance in Metalwork class that morning, smashing Neal Brose's calculator in a vice: "He's a smarmy bastard but he's not stupid. He saw what'd happen next, and next, and next. He knew he was stuffed" (276). Then she says, "I was pretty surprised, too. . . . I mean, I liked you, Taylor, but I thought you were. . . ." Jason fills in the blank: "A human punchbag?" Holly says, "Yeah. . . . What happened, Taylor? To you, I mean." Jason's reply is vague, but suggestive: "Stuff. . . . The year." And then he cooly slips her woven bracelet off of her wrist and onto his, looking more cool and self-possessed than we've seen in maybe this entire novel so far.
Please take 5 minutes to contemplate this scene in your notebook. What does it mean to say that "the year" has "happened" to Jason, and that his experiences over the course of this year-long narrative have indeed made him into less of a "human punch-bag"? Are you as surprised as Holly is by Jason's bold moves earlier in the day? In what ways do you see these larger changes in evidence in the final two chapters? In what ways has Jason grown over the course of his thirteenth year?
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