The Pinballs

“Once he had hit her so hard when she wouldn’t tell him where she’d been that she had gotten a concussion. Even with a concussion she had struggled up and hit him with a double boiler. ‘Nobody hits me without getting hit back,’ she had said before she collapsed.”

This quote exemplifies the type of abuse Carlie regularly faces, as well as her key characteristics. The word “once” hints that this was one of many instances of abuse. Her stepfather desires a toxic amount of control over Carlie and her whereabouts and deals her a severe injury when she won’t give him the information he wants. Carlie fights back against the abuse she faces. Due to events such as this one, she is used to dealing with her problems by fighting back.

“She waited, and then she said, ‘So what happened?’

There was a long pause. Harvey looked down at his legs. In his mind the shiny Grand Am lunged over him again. He felt sick. He said, ‘If you must know, I broke my legs playing football.’

He wished it had happened that way. A boy at school had broken his ankle playing football, and everyone in school had autographed his cast.”

The memory of the event that broke his legs is traumatic for Harvey. To avoid the upsetting truth that his father was drunk and ran over him with his car, Harvey lies. The lie reveals the kind of life Harvey wishes he had, where he is athletic and popular at school.

“Harvey felt a twinge in his right leg. It was the worst of the breaks. The bone had gone through the skin.

He looked at the back of Carlie’s head. He would have liked to answer her back, to insult her, but he knew that Carlie could out-insult anybody he had ever met.”

This twinge of pain foreshadows the infection that puts Harvey in the hospital. Through the novel, Harvey feels increasing pain in his right leg under his cast but does not mention it to anyone because he avoids discussing his accident as much as possible. He tries to avoid confrontation of any sort, like responding to Carlie’s teasing.