79 pages • 2 hours read
Susin NielsenWe Are All Made of Molecules
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 13-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 13-17 Summary
Stewart finds Ashley so difficult to deal with that he calls his therapist, Dr. Elizabeth Moskovich, to complain about her. Stewart avoids Ashley and gets through the rest of the school week with few problems. In science class, he makes friends with a girl named Phoebe. Later, he forges a note to get himself excused from gym class. However, he needs to find a more permanent solution to being stripped in the shower room by Jared.
At the end of the week, while Caroline and Ashley are attending a fashion show fundraiser, Leonard and Stewart take the opportunity to hang one of the late Mrs. Inkster’s paintings on the living room wall. Stewart is pleased to see the painting again and looks forward to a weekend sleepover with his best friend, Alistair. He intends to have Alistair help him figure out the Jared problem.
When Ashley gets home, she is incensed to learn that Stewart is having a sleepover, as she is planning one of her own with Lauren. As Caroline and Ashley discuss the issue, Alistair arrives and notes that Mrs. Inkster’s painting is hanging in the living room. After Alistair goes upstairs to meet Stewart, Ashley and Caroline are both appalled at the sight of the picture, which they notice for the first time. Ashley says: “This thing was not abstract. It was very, very lifelike. And it was unmistakably Stewart’s dead mother, breastfeeding her baby. Who was unmistakably Stewart. And the breasts were bare!” (72).
Ashley doesn’t want Lauren to see the painting, as gossip about it might ruin Ashley’s position on the top rung of the school social ladder. When Lauren shows up at her door, Ashley whisks her friend downtown to do some shopping. This is to give Caroline enough time to remove the painting. After the girls get back from shopping, they investigate Stewart’s room and find a spaghetti-marshmallow model of the Eiffel Tower that Stewart and Alistair made earlier. The boys have gone out, so Ashley takes the opportunity to crush the model with a math book.
On Saturday morning, Stewart overhears a conversation between his father and Caroline. She explains that the painting is a constant reminder of his dead wife. He agrees to take it down, and Caroline says that Leonard can substitute another object from the Inkster storage unit in its place. Stewart is crushed by his father’s capitulation. He says: “I want my dad to be able to move on with his life. I want him to be happy with Caroline. But I don’t want him to ever forget or stop loving my mom” (84).
Stewart distracts himself by visiting some of the shops on Main Street with Alistair. They pass a thrift store where Phoebe and her friend Violet are shopping. Violet asks if Stewart is really Ashley’s brother. She says that everybody at school thinks Ashley is horrible. After the girls leave, Alistair finds an article of clothing in the thrift shop that might solve the Jared problem in gym class.
On Saturday night, Ashley and Lauren enjoy their sleepover by playing loud music and singing off-key. Then, they log onto Facebook, where Lauren confesses that she has friended Jared. He is the high school jock that all the girls want to date. Ashley friends him too, and he acknowledges her by saying “hi.” Ashley is delighted since she’s interested in Jared too.
The next morning as Lauren is getting ready to leave, Ashley sees a car drive up. Her father is in the passenger seat with an attractive Black man. The two men kiss. Not wanting Lauren to know that her father is gay, Ashley distracts her just in time and says that the man is a business associate of her father’s. Ashley later complains to her mother about her father dating, and Caroline says that he should move on. Ashley doesn’t agree and feels that everybody is trying to ruin her life.
At school on Monday, Stewart is having a very good day. He gets high marks on an essay in English class and Phoebe invites him to join the Mathletes club. Mathletes meets during lunchtime, so Stewart doesn’t have to eat alone, and he feels welcomed by the group.
Later, after gym class, Jared once again bullies Stewart and tries to pull off his clothes before sending him to the showers. Stewart has taken Alistair’s suggestion and put on a wrestling uniform underneath his underwear. Jared is about to give him a wedgie when Stewart blurts out that he is Ashley’s brother. Jared backs down and says he was only joking. Then, he asks Stewart to tell Ashley that he said, “hi.”
Chapters 18-25 Summary
Ashley returns home from school in a bad mood. She got an F on an English paper because she plagiarized most of it from Wikipedia. Then, Lauren bought a skirt that Ashley wanted to buy. Just as Ashley sits down to watch her favorite TV show, Stewart walks in. She turns up the volume until Stewart announces that he is supposed to pass on a message from Jared.
Stewart is flummoxed by Ashley’s response: “One moment she acted like I was invisible; the next she was inviting me to sit down and have a cup of tea” (100). Ashley interrogates Stewart to find out what Jared said. Other than “hi,” Stewart recalls that Jared said Ashley was hot. This apparently pleases her because she invites Stewart to watch TV.
That evening, Ashley realizes that she never gave Stewart a message to send back to Jared. She barges into his bedroom to find him hunched underneath an orange and brown afghan. He protests that his activities are personal. Thinking he is masturbating, Ashley backs away and shouts, “Just—tell Jared I said hi back! “and calls Stewart ‘Pervert!’” (104).
The next day, Stewart is in a good mood at school, further improved when Phoebe asks him and her friend Violet for lunch. Stewart tells the girls that Jared asked to meet him in the gym after school. Phoebe and Violet are wary because Jared has a bad reputation. Later that day, Stewart assumes that Jared has some new hazing ritual in mind when the jock grabs him and takes him to see the coach.
At home that same day, Ashley is happy. She sketched three clothing designs in home economics class and her teacher said she has an eye for fashion. Her reverie is interrupted by a growl and a brown paw grabbing her without warning. Ashley shrieks in terror, tackling Stewart—who is wearing a costume—to the ground.
Ashley’s screams bring Phil and his new boyfriend, Michael. They all prepare to attack the beast when they realize that it’s simply Stewart in a costume. Jared and the coach offered him the job of mascot for the Borden Bulldogs basketball team. While everyone is relieved with the explanation, Ashley grows cross with her father for bringing his boyfriend over. She leaves abruptly.
Upstairs in her room, Ashley ponders her changed relationship with Phil. She looks through an old family photo album to figure out when everything went wrong, but can’t find evidence that her father wasn’t happily married. She concludes that he was lying to the family all along. She says: “My dad has reached out to me a lot. And once or twice, I’ve tried to reach back. But…I don’t know. I just can’t get past the lie” (117).
Stewart appears and interrupts Ashley’s musings. She is about to slam the door in his face until he explains that Jared got him the job of mascot. Ashley eagerly badgers Stewart for details and asks if Jared has another message for her. Stewart says that Jared wants to chat with Ashley on Facebook that evening around eight.
While she’s delighted with the message, Ashley returns to Stewart’s strange afghan ritual. He explains that he was simply breathing in his mother’s molecules. Stewart says that everything is made of molecules and that breathing in the scent of his mother’s favorite afghan is a way for him to connect to her. Ashley softens and admits that if her mother died suddenly, she might do something weird too. Stewart notes it is “easily the best conversation Ashley and I had ever had” (121).
Chapters 13-25 Analysis
Stewart and Ashley’s behavior patterns escalate. Ashley continues to isolate herself from her new family and act as if the world is determined to make her miserable. The theme of an Exclusionary Social Hierarchy is explored in Ashley’s attempts to perform damage control and preserve her reputation. In her eyes, it’s bad enough that Lauren knows Stewart is her stepbrother. It would be far worse if she knew that Phil is gay and dating Michael. Ashley’s anti-gay bias reveals her selfishness; the root of her bias is her concern for the potential effect of her father’s relationship on her own social status.
At the same time that Ashley isolates herself from her father and friends at school, Stewart demonstrates behavior compatible with the theme of Inclusive Molecules in his burgeoning friendship with Phoebe and Violet, two girls who are as intellectually gifted as he is. He becomes part of Mathletes, a group whose interests put them at odds with the in-crowd, but who find satisfying camaraderie together. These chapters allow Stewart to fully articulate his theory that everyone shares the same molecules. His mother’s afghan becomes the conversation starter that allows him to explain this principle to Ashley.
While the two teens continue their parallel trajectory, an unlikely catalyst appears to bring their disparate worlds together. Jared is both the class bully and the most attractive boy in school, depending on the perceiver. As might be expected, Stewart and Ashley describe him in such different terms that he might be two people. However, his interest in Ashley causes him to temper his bad behavior toward Stewart. Ashley is equally transparent in her motives and allows Stewart to talk to her as long as he has a message for her from Jared. Ashley and Jared align along exclusionary lines of self-interest.
Ashley and Stewart are getting along better due to Ashley’s self-interest. However, readers see a glimpse of real connection when Stewart explains his theory on molecules and opens up about his mom. Ashley displays empathy and softens, foreshadowing her transformation as a character.
