The Topeka School

The day after Darren’s first time partying with kids from his high school and then passing out drunk, Darren awakes to discover that he is alone in the middle of the woods. Though Darren suspects that he may have been “abandoned by his friends,” he also feels that the party was the “best night of his life” (149). Instead of getting frightened in the woods, Darren is excited to test out his long-imagined “survivalist” skills (149-50). Darren makes his way back from the lake by “trusting his instinct, which was wrong,” though he eventually makes his way to the highway (151). Walks past the town of Stull, which is rumored to contain a Hellmouth, he becomes paranoid that the entire night of partying was merely a ploy by the Devil to capture Darren’s soul. Darren finally gets to a town which he at first believes is Topeka, only to eventually realize he is in Lawrence, which is just “as many miles from home as when he rose from the ground six hours ago” (155).

Jonathan sits in a plane that is circling New York City’s JFK airport, waiting to land. He is reminded of the first time that he flew into New York, when he was 16, returning to the United States after living in Taiwan for two years.