Crank

Kristina directly addresses the reader, saying they probably want to know Kristina’s story and what made her turn to drugs. Why did she veer away from a steady path as a straight-A student into chaos?

Kristina begins to answer the questions she posed in Chapter 2. Perhaps her move toward addiction began when she found herself increasingly isolated. Marie, her mother, is too busy chasing her own dream of being a writer. Her stepfather, Scott, is too strict, while her older sister, Leigh, is dealing with coming out. Her baby brother, Jake, is too young. Unable to connect with her family, Kristina can only relate to a more reckless part of herself, someone she calls Bree.

Kristina muses that Bree has always existed in her. She summons Bree when Kristina cries. She remembers the night when she first released Bree, dissolving the layer between rules and transgression.

Kristina asks the readers not to make armchair diagnoses about Bree. Bree is not an imaginary friend or an invention or proof that Kristina has a particular mental health condition. Bree is real, the part of Kristina that is private, secret, and transgressive.

Marie, Kristina’s mother, will probably say the trouble began when a judge ordered that Kristina visit Marie’s ex-husband, Kristina’s biological father. Kristina’s father had not contacted her in eight years but now wanted a visit. Kristina persuaded her mother to let her go to Albuquerque, where her father lives, but Marie had her doubts, knowing her ex-husband was self-centered.

On the crowded, uncomfortable flight to Albuquerque, Kristina is seated next to a complaining, elderly man named Albert. Albert tells her he has been lonely since his wife died. Kristina thinks she has been alone since Marie met Scott, her stepfather.

Albert dozes off, and Kristina’s mood mellows. Looking at Albert sleep, Kristina wonders if he has met his “Genevieve,” his soulmate, in his dream. Kristina reflects on childhood memories of her father, letting herself believe he has been waiting to see her all the eight years they were estranged.

The flight finally lands. The landscape outside is a blazing desert. Bidding goodbye to Albert, Kristina raises a mental toast to “part-time / relatives and / substitutes for love” (17).

When Kristina spots her father at the airport, she is taken aback by how old he looks. She realizes she had been imagining him as he looked to her seven-year-old self: the handsome “Prince / of Albuquerque” (19).

Her father also has trouble recognizing Kristina. When he hugs her, a smell of cigarettes and old sweat engulfs her. Her father tells Kristina she has grown a lot, and Kristina wryly responds, “It’s been eight / years, Dad” (21).

Kristina and her father have a stilted conversation on their way home. She tells her dad she is the same as always, hiding that she feels hormonal and confused and craves love.

The car’s air conditioning is broken, and the heat from the open windows bothers Kristina. She does not like her father’s increasingly personal questions or when he lights a cigarette. Her father says he is free to smoke now that he is out of her mother’s control. Kristina feels disenchanted with her father, thinking of him as the “King of Cliché” (25).

Kristina’s feelings of disappointment grow as she sees her father’s rundown apartment building, which he refers to as his “castle.” As she climbs up the stairs to the apartment, she runs into a young man.

Kristina feels an instant attraction to the handsome boy, dressed only in cut-offs. He smiles at her. She notes to herself ironically that he is definitely not her type.

The thought that the young man lives in the same building as her dad gives Kristina hope for the summer. Her father’s apartment offers no relief, being as terrible as she had imagined.

Kristina is surprised her father hasn’t taken the day off to be with her. Her father says his boss is strict but admits that he hasn’t told her that it is his daughter who is visiting. The boss thinks Kristina is a “long-lost relative.”

Kristina’s father works off the books in a bowling alley so he can still claim his disability checks. He is sure no one will betray him because all the employees and customers at the alley have secrets of their own.

Kristina chooses to stay at the apartment rather than accompany her dad to the bowling alley.

In her father’s absence, Kristina explores his apartment. The rooms are empty and box-like. Tree branches brush against the windows. The walls are so thin that Kristina can hear the neighbors squabbling.

The screams from next door remind Kristina of the fights between her parents before they got divorced. She remembers her father using ugly epithets against Marie and Marie calling him an unfit father. Though part of Kristina knows her mother was right, another part resents her for keeping her away from her father.

In retrospect, Kristina understands that her mother was angry with her father because of his infidelity and addictions. But as a child, all she understood was that her mother had separated the children from their dad.

As she’s grown up, Kristina has gained perspective on the situation. Her mother tried her best to raise Kristiana and Leigh on her own after the divorce. Scott brought stability to their lives, and Jake, her little brother, was born. Her father, on the other hand, always chose drugs over his family.

Kristina turns on the TV and discovers her father hasn’t paid the cable bill. Bored, she steps out of the apartment and spots the boy she saw earlier, now flirting with a girl.

Kristina watches the couple from the shadows. The boy begs the girl for a kiss, and she responds that she is “not that kind of a girl” (44). She kisses him anyway until her mother calls her home. The girl promises the boy she will be intimate with him later. Kristina dubs the girl “Guinevere.”

Kristina is not sure whether she is sad or relieved that the boy has a girlfriend. She finds him attractive, but she has never kissed anyone. She is in no mood for a summer fling. If the boy did ask her out, she would not know how to respond.

The boy pops up next to Kristina. He recognizes her and tells her he has been waiting for her. A nervous Kristina feels at a loss for words.

The boy tells Kristina he has seen her looking at him. He thinks she is cute. He asks her for her name and Kristina replies, “Bree.”

At the time Kristina lied to the boy by saying her name was Bree, she had heard the name maybe once before in her life. The name came to her mind almost automatically. The boy’s name is Adam, though his friends call him Buddy. Kristina and Adam flirt.

Emboldened by Bree, Kristina feels she can kiss Adam. Just then, Adam’s girlfriend calls out for him.

Adam’s girlfriend comes up the stairs looking for him. She stares at Kristina with suspicion. Adam introduces the two. Guinevere’s real name is Lynx, or as Kristina privately dubs her, Lince. As Adam leaves with Lince, he whispers to Kristina that they will meet again soon.

Kristina knows she should not covet someone else’s boyfriend but is very attracted to Adam. She steps inside her father’s apartment and spots an enormous cockroach in the kitchen.

Kristina has trouble falling asleep alone in her father’s unkempt guest bedroom. She keeps seeing the kitchen cockroach in her head. She yearns for her clean and comfortable bedroom at home.

Picturing herself in a beautiful meadow where she sees mating wildcats, Kristina drifts off to sleep. She approaches the animals in her dream. When the female cat looks up, she has Kristina’s face.

Startled by the dream, Kristina wakes up drenched in sweat. She wanders into the kitchen and hears her father snoring loudly in the next room.

Kristina spends the next three days sleeping in, like her father, and waking up to chat with him over food. He tells her he hasn’t dated much since the divorce. Though he wants to marry again, no woman has yet measured up to her mother. Kristina is startled by the confession.

Kristina accompanies her father to the bowling alley in the evenings. She is surprised to see the same crowd at the alley every night. She realizes the regulars are there not just to bowl, but also to flirt with each other and possibly score drugs. Kristina has never thought about drug use in school. Now she notes her father may be using drugs as well.

Kristina reflects that her father has always smoked marijuana. As he told her, pot makes him happy and mellow. However, she observes that “the / white stuff” (67)—meth—is different. Her father stays up all night snorting “crank…the monster” (68), which makes him lose his appetite. Though crank is tough on the body, it gives him a great high.

After being high on meth for two days and two nights, one finally comes down and crashes badly.

Kristina’s father crashes, sleeping for the entire day. Bored and lonely, Kristina goes to the corner store and runs into Adam.