Belly Conklin looks forward to the day she feels grown up because she thinks it will improve every aspect of her life. Throughout her 16th summer, Belly learns that as much as she wants to grow up and enter the adult world, challenges lie therein. To Belly, growing up means access to a world that has previously eluded her.

Belly struggles to reconcile her desire to catapult herself into more mature experiences while carrying a desire to cling to the way things used to be. Even when she finds herself confronting a new experience that she wants to dive into, such as kissing Cam at the drive-in theater, she worries about taking that step over the invisible border of adulthood that she cannot return from: “I wished Steven and Jeremiah were out there in the dark somewhere, spying on us and cracking up. It would make me feel comforted somehow. Safer” (155). She expresses a desire in these moments to return to the comfort of childhood. Even though growing up as the youngest and only girl in the group troubled her, Belly at least felt her place in the world was secure, if not altogether desirable.