“I sat down next to Rhonda and hugged her. ‘I feel so helpless!’ I sobbed. ‘Why did he do this to me?’ ‘He didn’t do it to you, Keisha,’ Tyrone said quietly. ‘He did it to himself.’ ‘No, Tyrone,’ I flashed back at him. ‘He did it to all of us!’”

Keisha, Tyrone, and Rhonda have just learned about Andy’s suicide. It is ironic that Keisha immediately evolves from personal grief to collective grief. Later in the book, after her encounter with Jonathan, she will be temporarily incapable of seeing beyond her own emotions to include her friends.

“‘I’ll probably never be OK again,’ she said. ‘I miss my brother, I’m still shaking about Andy, and I’m scared death is just gonna jump in and grab me, too!’ ‘I know it’s hard,’ I told her, ‘but you gotta hold on to the good memories and step out into the future—even if it’s scary. That’s what I’m trying to do.’”

Joyelle is grieving for Andy, Rob, and herself. Eventually, she will play out her deepest fear when she almost follows in her brother’s footsteps by dying in a car accident. Luckily, she survives. In this quote, Keisha again gives good advice that she will fail to take until after she recovers from Jonathan’s toxic influence.

“‘We could use a little Andy right now. When will this feeling go away, Gerald?’ ‘It will always be there, Keisha, but you’ll learn to lock it away. If you don’t, you’ll let the pain eat you up.’”

Andy was the class clown before Leon stepped into that role. Gerald’s advice is sound, but Keisha fails to heed it during her recovery. She wallows in misery and self-loathing. It will take the help of others to pull her out of it.