After Dolores tells her mother about the incident with Jack, Dolores asks for no charges to be filed and starts attending counselling, which she hates. Bernice, filled with regret for not being able to prevent what happened, begins doting on Dolores, bringing her home cigarettes, candy, and other junk food, and buying her a new television. She lies for Dolores to get out of school. Dolores spends most of her time in her room, avoiding the world, eating, and watching TV.

When Dolores begins high school at Easterly High, she enjoys her time with the counselor there, Mr. Pucci. During a session with him and her mother, Mr. Pucci explains that Dolores should consider attending college. Dolores dreads the idea of college and just wants to be done with school and spends the next several weeks isolated in her room. Bernice applies to several schools on Dolores’s behalf, even writing her an entrance essay, and when Dolores insults her mother’s efforts, Bernice throws her typewriter off the table. Dolores’s grandmother has been distant since the rape, not knowing how to respond and seeing Dolores as somehow tainted.

The only school that accepts Dolores requires a physical examination, and Dolores fights until the last moment against it.