58 pages • 1 hour read
Dear Zoe
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Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Just Wait”
Tess says she thought she learned about death last summer when her Lake friends were in the car accident. They weren’t drinking, just driving too fast, and jumped over the railroad crossing. One boy died after going through the sunroof, and another, Matthew, was in a coma for months and still can’t speak or feed himself. She messaged constantly with the surviving three until they stopped responding. Tess suspects they stopped talking to her because she didn’t really understand grief and was talking to them as an “excuse to be sad and afraid” (69), much like how her classmates write poetry about September 11. She says everyone will have reason enough to be sad and afraid if they just wait.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Em”
Tess’s dad follows her out of the church but doesn’t ask what happened. They go home and order pizza, and Frank the puppy goes to bed early with Tess.
The next day Tess goes to see Em at the elementary school after the school day. She falls asleep outside and wakes up to Em, who saw Tess through the window and told her teacher she had to go to the bathroom. Em asks Tess if she’s coming home, and Tess says no but that she came to school because she wanted to see her. Tess tells Em she didn’t leave home because of Em, and Em says she knows. Tess promises she’ll come see Em at the end of every school day. Tess offers Em a ride home with her dad, promising they’ll follow the school bus so their mom won’t know. Em agrees and returns to class, and Tess wonders how she got so much stronger than Tess.
Tess’s father’s mail truck is a hit with Em and her classmates. There’s no seat, so Tess puts Em on her lap and buckles her seatbelt over them. They follow the bus through the neighborhood, and when they approach Tess’s house, Tess doesn’t want to look. Em asks Tess if she’s sure she doesn’t want to get out, too, and Tess stays in the truck.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Jimmy Freeze”
Tess addresses Zoe, telling her Zoe is starting to feel grown up to Tess, like she’ll understand anything Tess tells her—like about Jimmy Freeze, for example. The Freeze family lives next door to Tess’s dad. Because the houses are so close together, Tess often hears what the neighbors are doing, like “the whole street is a dysfunctional family and the houses aren’t really houses but different rooms in one big long house” (77). It’s different from her mother’s neighborhood; another difference is there are no stars in her father’s neighborhood.
The Freezes are a Hungarian couple, and their son Jimmy is tall and thin with curly hair. One night, Tess hears him fighting with his father while Mrs. Freeze cries. Tess goes to sleep early and wakes up around two in the morning to Jimmy Freeze blasting rap music. Her dad doesn’t wake up because he’s had a lot to drink. Tess almost opens her window to tell him to stop, but then he begins to blast James Taylor. Tess thinks she’s dreaming because David used to play James Taylor music to Zoe, and he hasn’t played it since Zoe died. Tess and Frank listen to James Taylor together, and then it repeats. Tess says it’s the first night she ever spent with Jimmy Freeze.
Chapters 14-16 Analysis
Chapter 14, “Just Wait,” demonstrates the many different forms grief can take in a life: Tess grieves for her friends, but she doesn’t grieve in the same way she grieves for Zoe. In describing the accident, Tess notes that she would have been in the car with them if she had been at the lake, underscoring the interconnected randomness of events in a life. The final line of the chapter reads as a warning to readers that everyone will experience true grief in their lifetime. In that way, Tess knows her experience is universal, even as she feels so isolated within her own experience.
Tess’s love for her sister Em is apparent in these chapters. At times, Em seems as sophisticated and as old as an adult to Tess; at other times, Em’s childlike thoughts reminds Tess of just how young she is. Tess begins to understand how deeply her absence has affected Em when they share a hug: “I could feel in the pressure of her full-body grip on me how alone I’d left her” (72). The communication that happens between Tess and Em is often physical, as Em does not have the adult language to articulate or express her feelings. Instead, the sisters share a bed, or Tess invites Em to sit on her lap, and much is communicated through touch. The physical moments between them are an ongoing conversation throughout the book. Tess admires Em’s strength, and it’s notable that Em has suffered a double loss: the death of her younger sister, Zoe, and the temporary loss of older sister Tess. Em’s intense feelings of abandonment are apparent not only in her physical touch with Tess, but also in her question of whether Tess is going to get out of the mail truck and come into their house.
Chapter 16, “Jimmy Freeze,” begins with a meta-textual moment in which Tess says she is starting to feel like Zoe is a grown-up. Though Tess’s letters are addressed to Zoe, as the letters evolve she writes them as much for herself as for Zoe. In this way, the letters are therapeutic for Tess, akin to journaling, a place in which she can work out her innermost feelings and better understand herself. Part of Tess’s development over the course of the story involves her connection with Jimmy Freeze. Her revealing that the night she is recounting was the first she ever spent with him has a romantic connotation, heavily implying the romantic relationship that will develop between Tess and Jimmy. Much like Tess communicates with Em physically, her first “conversation” with Jimmy is nontraditional: She listens to the music he plays through her window. The houses in the neighborhood are close together, both an indication of a less wealthy neighborhood and an arrangement that allows Tess to access greater intimacy within her community. She compares the neighborhood to one house belonging to a dysfunctional family, not unlike her experience at her mother and David’s house. Nevertheless, her intimate relationship with Jimmy Freeze develops slowly, and their first night together is technically spent apart, in their own bedrooms.
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