48 pages • 1 hour read
Ally CarterI'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
Despite Bex and Liz’s objections, Cammie tells Macey what’s going on and about her exchanges with Josh. Macey tells Cammie that “you've still got a shot” with him (133), and Cammie begs Macey to help. Macey refuses unless the girls help her get out of the seventh-grade classes to move up with the rest of the sophomores. In exchange, Macey says she won’t tell the professors about the tire explosion and how the girls have been sneaking around. Cammie agrees, realizing Macey does have what it takes to be a Gallagher Girl. The four form a tentative alliance.
Chapter 13 Summary
For the next two weeks, the girls gather information about Josh in preparation for going to see him again. They plan for Cammie to cross his path in the town square one night and spend the evening getting Cammie ready—accessorizing her with religious jewelry and rubbing cat hair all over her. Feeling warn out before the mission even begins, Cammie thinks how being a spy wasn’t challenging, rather “being a girl is the tricky part” (144). With well-wishes from Bex, Liz, and Macey, Cammie sneaks out of the school.
Chapter 14 Summary
Despite twisting her ankle in the high-heeled boots she borrowed from Macey, Cammie makes it to the town square, where she sits around for a while until Josh happens by. Josh mentions that he hasn’t seen her around lately. Cammie blurts out that she’s been in Mongolia with the Peace Corps because her parents are big on community service and then silently scolds herself to “be a less extreme liar” (148). They make small talk for a few minutes until Josh has to go. When he asks for Cammie’s last name, she says Solomon, and when he asks if he can call or email, Cammie says no but that she’ll be back in town tomorrow night. Josh says, “maybe I'll see you around” (151), which the girls puzzle over when Cammie returns to school.
Chapter 15 Summary
The next night, Cammie is waiting for Josh in town when he comes up behind her and covers her eyes. Cammie’s spy training kicks in and she flips him onto the ground before she realizes it’s him. Josh is amazed and asks where she learned to do that. Cammie says her mom taught her, to which Josh says he feels bad for her dad. Usually when people mention Cammie’s dad, she clams up, but seeing Josh’s smile, thinking of her dad doesn’t hurt so much and she “felt like smiling, too” (155).
Cammie and Josh walk in silence for a bit. Just as the quiet’s getting uncomfortable, Josh tells her about how he broke his arm at the nearby park and how his mom freaked out because that’s her default reaction to everything. They swap stories about how their parents are overbearing which segues into talking about travel and teachers, and Cammie feels like she’s in a different world from the academy. Josh asks if she’ll be back tomorrow, but she can’t risk sneaking out a third night in a row. Instead, she spots a loose stone on a gazebo and tells him to leave her a note and turn the stone backwards. If she leaves a note, she’ll turn it right-ways out. After a minute, Josh asks “You're not a normal girl, are you?” (164). Cammie doesn’t know what to say.
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You highlights the differences between the world we know and the ones we meet along the way. Those worlds continue to meld for Cammie in these chapters even as she gravitates more toward the “normal” world she’s starting to discover. Gaining information about where to meet Josh and flipping him when he sneaks up behind her show how Cammie can’t truly deny her spy training and nature, which foreshadows her ultimately choosing the academy at the end of the book. Her conversations with Josh about simple things like broken bones and teachers make her feel separated from the stress of spy life. Josh’s average experiences make Cammie long for the same with her mother and for her father to still be alive. The person she pretends to be around Josh symbolizes the person she wishes she could be in her most vulnerable moments.
Macey starts to truly become a Gallagher Girl in these chapters. Her understanding of how boys think makes her invaluable to Cammie’s mission, and the deal Macey offers shows she has the skills to be a spy. In these chapters and throughout the rest of the book, Macey becomes more and more involved with the sophomore class. Here, her help mainly consists of advice of what to say and how to act, as well as loaning Cammie clothes. These contributions foreshadow the greater ones she makes later in the book.
Cammie’s suggestion to leave messages behind a loose stone represents how popular spy culture is engrained as truth to those outside the profession. Josh doesn’t hesitate to accept Cammie’s story because it sounds like something that would be in the movies; because Josh is an average American boy, Hollywood informs his knowledge of spies. In Cammie’s reality, leaving messages behind stones is probably an unsafe form of communication. Her suggestion that they use it shows that she doesn’t think Josh is a honeypot, and even if he is, her emotions are getting in the way of her discerning the truth.
