The Past

The author uses Eva and Shane's long term friendship as an entryway into exploring the individual's relationship with the past. When Eva and Shane are teenagers, they connect over their difficult home lives, their childhood trauma, and their profound feelings of alienation. Years later, when Shane resurfaces in Eva's life at the State of the Black Author event, she feels desperate for him to disappear once more. In Chapter 7, "You First, the narrator says, "Eva was scared of who she'd been with him: out of control. Irresponsible. One big, raging impulse. It had taken everything she had to bury that troubled teenager. And now he was here, digging that girl up" (68). Shane's presence, therefore, immediately triggers Eva's memories of her former self. Because she has done everything in her power to hide or eradicate this teenager self, in the narrative present, she fears that reigniting...