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1. “You can’t run away from your problems, eventually you will run out of gas.” This is what the bumper sticker would say for many reasons. The idea throughout the whole story was Callie’s attempt to escape a traumatic childhood and family troubles. Callie was always depressed as a teenager and eventually resorted to cutting herself for the high-like state she would receive from the rush of endorphins. She used cutting herself as a way to escape the real world as someone would use drugs or alcohol. She was finally caught by the school nurse. The nurse saw all of her scars and immediately reported her to the right authorities which resulted in her deliverance to an institute of mental health, Sea Pines. There People tried to help her and understand her but a major barrier was in their way. Callie wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even her family. She believed maybe if she didn’t talk about it, it would go away. She also believed if she cut herself the problems would go away for a little while. She believed that by running away the problems would fix themselves, but they don’t. At the end of the novel Callie took her final run, a symbolic attempt to escape. She finally ran out of gas, she faced her problems. This is why it would be a good bumper sticker to represent the book.
2. What made Callie understand what she had to do fix the problem and what mad her decide to stop running? It is a god analytical question because it is a clear defined question but allows a bit of opinion mixed with fact. In the novel it never states clearly what in Callie’s mind finally clicks to make her understand. In the novel Callie runs away from the clinic, runs until she cannot run anymore. The scene turns to night and she decides to walk into Dunkin Donuts. She then has an epiphany. She thinks what if...and calls her dad. For the first time in to longest time they talk and her father picks her up. This was her last run. With reading the story some parts of this answer are obvious. She eventually gets scared to cut herself and see’s what she might become. the answers would be interesting and would require a deeper sense of thought and critical thinking.
3. You say it's up to me to do the talking. You lean forward, place a box of tissues in front of me, and your black leather chair groans like a living thing. Like the cow it used to be before somebody killed it and turned it into a chair in a shrink's office in a loonie bin.Your stockinged legs make a shushing sound as you cross them. "Can you remember how it started?" you say.I remember exactly.It was the last cross-country meet, right around the four-mile mark. Everybody had passed me, just like the week before and the week before that. Everybody except a girl from the other team. We were the only ones left in the last stretch of the course, the part that winds through the woods and comes out behind the school. Our shadows passed along the ground slantwise; slowly they merged, then her shadow passed mine.The soles of her sneakers swam up and down in front of me, first one, then the other, a grid of ridges that spelled out the upside-down name of the shoe company. My steps fell in time with hers. My feet went where hers had just been. She leaned in around a corner, I leaned in around a corner. She breathed, I breathed. Then she was gone.I couldn't even picture her anymore. But what scared me, really scared me, was that I couldn't remember the moment when I'd stopped seeing her. And I knew than that if I couldn't see her, no one could see me. Sounds from the track meet floated by. A whistle trilling. Muffled applause, the weak sputter of gloved hands clapping. I was still running, but now I was off the path, heading away from the finish line, past the cars in the parking lot, the flagpole, the Home of the Lions sign. Past fast-food places and car repair shops and video stores. Past the new houses and the park. Until, somehow, I was at the entrance to our development.It was starting to get dark now, and I slowed down, walking past houses with windows of square yellow light where mothers were inside making dinner, past houses with windows of square blue light where kids were inside watching TV, to our house, where the driveway was empty and the lights were off.I let myself in and flipped the light switch. There was an explosion of light. The kitchen slid sideways, then righted itself.I leaned against the door. "I'm home," I said to no one.The room tilted left, then right, then straightened out. I grabbed hold of the edge of the dinner table and tried to remember if we stopped eating there because it was piled with junk or if it was piled with junk because we stopped eating there. On the table there was a roll of batting, a glue gun, a doily, a 1997 Kratfy Kitchens catalogue. Next to the catalogue was a special craft knife with the word EXACTO on the handle. It was sleek, like a fountain pen, with a thin triangular blade at the tip. I picked it up and laid the blade against the doily. The little knots came undone, just like that. I touched the blade to a piece of ribbon draped across the table and pressed, ever so slightly. The ribbon unfurled into two pieces and slipped to the floor without a sound. Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm.A tingle acred across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and by body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next. What happened next was that a perfect, straight line of blood bloomed up from under the edge of the blade. The line grew into a long, fat bubble, a lush crimson bubble that got bigger and bigger. I watched from above, waiting to see how big it would get before it burst. When it did, I felt awesome. Satisfied, finally. Then exhausted.* * *I don't tell you any of this, though. I don't say anything. I just hug my elbows to my sides. My mind is a video on fast forward. A video with no soundtrack.And finally you sigh and stand up and say. "That's all we have time for today."
It shows her state of mind and her logic in the situation she is in. She chooses to refuse help, she believes that she is either too far gone or can handle her problems herself. Either way this is a low point in her life of which she gradually recovers and starts seeing that it is all not worth it. She starts speaking, first for the sake of her friend. Then for the sake of herself. I particularly liked this passage because of how it portrays her thoughts