Percontation Points

P: 6/11/26 M: 6/18/26

Chapter 4.4

At home, I flop on my bed fully dressed. Maybe I’ll skip school tomorrow to job hunt. If I start working at Quick Chicken now, I could be an assistant manager by the time I’m thirty-five. There’s no way I’ll get into MIT with a criminal record.

I would love to see actual consequences start to happen. Unfortunately, you know nothing bad is going to happen. Which makes me kind of not look forward to the rest of this.

I’ve never felt, all of which, I now know, are symptoms of brain tumors. In a word, I feel hopeless.

Chapter 4.4 summary: Charlie knows that what he did is bad, and that if Jo rats on him, he’ll have a criminal record. But enough about that… Charlotte called Becca, who hands him her phone. Charlotte congratulates him on a job well done. He tries to ask if they’re okay, but Charlotte kind of hangs up on him without answering. Mm, yeah. She’s clearly using Charlie simply to get back at her shitty sister. Charlie then spends the next page researching about cancer online. Except that we don’t actually see what he finds out, yet so much time is spent on this.

Chapter 4.5

“Believe me, Ms. Finch. I understand.”

Chapter 4.5 summary: The next day, Charlie slinks into lit class. Ms. F doesn’t say anything about last night, and only makes Charlie get up and do his group project presentation first. It’s about how there are an infinite number of poem possibilities… Even though that doesn’t really make any sort of mathematical sense. Anybody can write a new poem that’s never been done before. But even Ms. F seems impressed with their presentation, even though Charlie does go off on this rant about infinity. Seriously, what is this guy’s problem about the concept of infinity? Before she dismisses the group, she asks to talk to Charlie in her office after class is over for the day. He goes as instructed, where she congratulates him on a job well done of stink-bombing her house. She asks how long that he’s known Charlotte, and then goes on this rant about a shitty teacher who called Charlotte “stupid”. Honestly, I know that I’ve been ragging on Jo, but we literally don’t know shit about her because this has been told to us 100% from Charlie’s perspective. We don’t even know much about Charlotte, despite the fact that the plot revolves around her. It’s because neither Charlotte nor Jo are actual characters, and are simply plot devices to further a this man’s journey into adulthood. Jo is an obstacle he’s decided he must overcome in order to win the prize of Charlotte. I hate this so much.