Tookie wakes up at the Obscure Obelisks. Her last memory is of Lizzie picking up that shard of metal. It is entirely unclear whether this was her "normal" cutting or a suicide attempt. It is also unclear of whether Lizzie survived. Not that anyone in the chapter cares after the first couple pages.
The bus driver is gone, but the demolished bus is nearby.
They respond, saying that they're all there. Tookie calls Lizzie's name, but there is no answer and no sign of her.
As much as I dislike how Tookie has treated Lizzie so far, it's nice to see her feeling some actual guilt about the situation. Tookie then has a minor breakdown in which she abuses some helpless semicolons.
I can't help but see Tookie and Bravo's relationship as mutually abusive, so the comment about Bravo "humiliating" her falls pretty flat.
Tookie starts sobbing that she's sorry. She stops crying (for no given reason) only to realize that Ci~L is also sobbing and repeating that she's sorry repeatedly. Ci~L is using a reed to beat herself. She then starts clawing at herself and crying.
Ci~L notices Tookie and starts advancing on her.
"Take me," she said softly to the advancing Ci~L. "Experiment on me instead of my friends. Torture me, sacrifice me, kill me. Let them live."
This prompts another breakdown by Ci~L, and Tookie asks why Ci~L is crying.
She then turns and starts talking to the Obelisks, saying that they always believed they belonged at Modelland. She says she should have noticed the night sweats, headaches and bulging veins that lead to them catching the Pilgrim's Plague.
And now the Pilgrim's Plague makes even less sense if it's something you can catch like a cold.
We get a really long exposition telling about Ci~L's past and attempting to explain her actions so far. I shall give you the condensed version.
Ci~L had three friends: Hendal, Woodlyn, and Katherine. They didn't meet Modelland's beauty standards, but Ci~L considered them beautiful. She spent her days doing photo shoots, going to parties, posing to appear on Metopian money, and many other things, and her friends would visit her when she returned home each day.
Then, the three suddenly vanished. After a week of no word, Ci~L went to the Divide and found their bodies. She dug two of them up (the third body was left exposed), and was fully prepared to parade them through LaDorno to show the price of Modelland's current policies. She was stopped by Gunnero before she could do this, so instead she buried her friends and put up the Obelisks to mark their graves.
She mentions giving herself up to them after building the Obelisks. What this means isn't explained. (Possession may be implied, but the wording's too vague to say for sure.)
The BellaDonna wanted to rip the Obelisks down, but the mayor of Metopia insisted they stay because they were seen as a "mystical sign" and had increased tourism drastically. Since the BellaDonna didn't have the authority to take the Obelisks down herself, she decided to take out her frustration on Ci~L.
When Ci~L was sent to pick up Tookie on T-DOD, she noticed how "unusual-looking" Tookie was and decided that it was her opportunity to break Modelland's beauty standards. She chose three girls that resembled her deceased friends.
Dylan was chosen for being voluptuous like Hendal. Piper was chosen for being pale like Woodlyn. Shiraz was chosen for being tiny like Katherine. (And Ci~L used those names when getting the three into Modelland, if you'll remember an earlier chapter.)
Ci~L's past should have felt really gripping and compelling, but the way it was handled — through a very long, tedious monologue — made it considerably less exciting than this summary makes it sound. It's also hard to mourn for Ci~L's friends since we don't know anything about them aside from that they're like Tookie's friends.
Ci~L reveals that she was never planning on sacrificing the girls. Her "experiment" was just trying to use the girls to prove that Modelland's standards of beauty were horribly flawed.
-.-
The girls point out that her actions really don't line up with this story.
Ci~L winced. "If I've been looking at you like that, I'm sorry. It's just ... you remind me so much of them. Your spunk, your sassiness, your intelligence . . . I get flashbacks of my sister-friends and my mind starts doing crazy things. I'm sorry if I scared you—it was a combination of fierce and tough love."
Love? Ci~L you don't even know these girls. All you know is that they remind you of your dead friends.
Ci~L reveals that her power of SixxSensa gives her enhanced senses, so she knew something was up before ManAttack. That's why she told Tookie and her friends to meet with her immediately afterward.
This raises some questions. Why didn't her SixxSensa tell her the girls were terrified of her? Why didn't she ever attempt to talk to them? She's had months, and she's been forced to attend classes with them. Are you really telling me that there was no way to sneak them a note?
Why is this plot point being resolved in such an anticlimactic way?
Ci~L tells them that if they return to Modelland now — before anyone notices them missing — they can avoid getting in trouble. They can change Modelland's standards of beauty by being there.
Tookie tells they'll return with her on one condition: Ci~L stop hurting herself.
Ci~L glanced at the reed, looking at it almost like she was about to part with a piece of herself. Then she rolled her shoulders back, stood up straighter, and placed it in Tookie's hands. "Promise me you'll stop this," Tookie said. Ironically, they were the exact words she wanted to say to Lizzie about her sharp objects. She only hoped that someday she could.
ಠ_ಠ
Let me get this straight. Tookie is not even going to attempt to find Lizzie? She's not going to inform anyone to go look for her? She's just going to return to Modelland and hope things turn out okay?
For all Tookie knows, Lizzie could be bleeding to death (or already dead). And she's not even to go look for her. She's not even going to confirm whether Lizzie is even still alive.
And you want to me to believe that Tookie is a leader and a good friend? You want me to sympathize with her? Not happening, Tyra. Tookie is one of the least likeable characters in this entire book. The fact that the text is trying desperately to get me to like her while ignoring the horrible things she does only makes me hate her more.
And to add to my annoyance, this treats mental illness and self-harm as if it's incredibly easy to deal with. It's like Dylan's eating disorder all over again, where one heartfelt conversation can immediately cure the problem. It's trivializing serious issues, and does more harm than good.*
Well that revelation just came right out of nowhere.
This choice is to go back.
I don't think I even need to rant about how screwed up that is.
Ci~L talks to the Obelisks, telling her friends that she loves them and will never forget them. She then says that the Unicas are "going to do it for you." They leave to return to Modelland and to watch the 7Seven Tournament.
I actually went through three drafts of this installment because I just didn't know how to deal with this chapter. I couldn't really figure out why it bugged me so much. It didn't seem any worse than previous chapters. There was some actual tying up of plot threads that have been dangling since the prologue.
So why did I dislike it so much?
It was too easy.
This book has had a continual problem with things being too easy for the protagonists. They don't have to struggle. When they do struggle, it's almost entirely off-screen (Tookie and her friends improving at their classes). Solutions are dropped in their laps.
They need an escape? Bravo just happens to want to take Tookie to one to share their first kiss together. Tookie ends up in a surprise competition? She is handed the victory on a silver platter, outscoring everyone else without even trying to win. They need to convince a bus driver to help them? Shiraz uses a power we've never seen her use before. We'd never even seen her attempt to learn it.
One of their primary motivations and something that has been hinted at since the prologue — the sacrifice — was just dismissed as if it never mattered. It was all a giant red herring. Escaping being sacrificed has been the primary motivation of the girls for a long time now.
A bunch of foreshadowing was handwaved away as being people misinterpreting Ci~L or as Ci~L just acting crazy, even when her actions contradict what she said. It would have been an interesting plot twist if the story had spent time building towards it, but the way it's done just feels like an Ass Pull.
Imagine if Tookie had gathered together her friends and allies, actually trying to stop Ci~L from sacrificing them. And then after a long, intense struggle to win people to their side and escape being noticed while they plan, they arrive at their final confrontation against Ci~L. And they learn they were wrong. That they were demonizing a woman who is so distraught over the deaths of her friends that she's become mentally unbalanced.
Pulled off properly, it would have hit the readers hard. It would have made them want to reread the story to spot the hints that had led to this dramatic reveal.
Instead, everything is resolved by a conversation.
When you build up some dramatic confrontation for over four hundred pages and then suddenly say "nope, it never mattered", you aren't introducing a red herring. You are cheating your readers.
And that is why I hate this chapter.
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