Does It Hurt?

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of rape, sexual assault, incest, pedophilia, and situations of dubious consent.

“Cancer tastes like shit. I suck in deeply, menthol gliding past my tongue and filling my lungs with manufactured chemicals. How many of these do I have to smoke before cancer invades my cells, metastasizing until I’m ridden with disease? My throat tightens and revolts against the tobacco, forcing out a harsh cough. I pull the cigarette away and stare at it, my face twisted in disgust as smoke filters out of my nose and mouth.”

Early in Sawyer’s characterization, cigarettes represent her guilt and desire for punishment. She wonders how many cigarettes she would need to develop cancer, but the choice of a slow-acting means of hurting herself combines her desire for punishment with her vision of herself as “unforgivable.”

“All of my victims are men, and most of them have unisex names, making it easier for me to impersonate them. I’ve also slept with almost every one of them. Some…I didn’t really want to, and my skin crawled with every touch. But it was necessary to take what I needed. I don’t have the skills to do it online, so the good old-fashioned way is my only method. And in order to get close enough to obtain their private information—they have to take me home.”

The fact that Sawyer uses sex to hurt men by stealing from them diverts her aims away from malice toward vengeance, implying her trauma and prior abuse from Kevin. However, her decision to limit how much she steals also betrays an innate understanding that these men did not abuse her, so hurting them is only a substitution for striking back at her abuser.

“I’m a shit person, no doubt about that. But I’m not a sociopath, either. I don’t lack empathy, and I’m not guilt-free. Nevertheless, no one can know where I am. Who I am. So no, I can’t sleep at night, nor do I look myself in the mirror. But I’m doing what I can—the only thing I know how to do to survive.”

Sawyer explains how she sees herself, which is as “a shit person,” but she also includes the means for her redemption, noting that she is not beyond the realm of human emotion and motivation. Her true intent is not to hurt others but to survive by any means necessary. This illustrates her internal identity conflict, which she resolves by the end of the novel through forgiveness from herself and Enzo.