“Rob had a way of not-thinking about things. He imagined himself as a suitcase that was too full, like the one that he had packed when they left Jacksonville after the funeral. He made all his feelings go inside the suitcase; he stuffed them in tight and then sat on the suitcase and locked it shut.”

Not-thinking and not-talking is how Rob copes with his mother’s death. Rob mentally imprisons his memories and grief. He follows his father’s direction and tries not to think or talk about his mother, because it won’t bring her back and only causes pain.

“Here was somebody even stranger than he was. He was sure.”

Rob is an outsider at school in Lister: He is withdrawn and uncommunicative with the other kids at school, and he knows he is different. When Rob sees Sistine in her pink party dress, he recognizes that she will also be treated as an outsider.

“‘I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,’ Sistine said, ‘home of the Liberty Bell, and I hate the South because the people in it are ignorant. And I’m not staying here in Lister. My father is coming to get me next week.’ She looked around the room defiantly.”

Sistine’s feisty and insulting introduction immediately alienates her from the other students. It reveals her simmering anger, her pain over the loss of her father, and her desire to be reunited with him.