35 pages • 1 hour read
Margaret Peterson HaddixRunning Out Of Time
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1995A 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 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Jessie is worried about what might happen to the sick children if she gets caught and prays for help. Soon, a bread truck rolls up to the exit. When the driver stops to make small talk with the guard, Jessie sneaks inside the back of the truck. She cannot close the door properly and worries how she will escape unseen.
Chapter 12 Summary
Inside the truck, Jessie marvels at its speed and the music coming from the radio. When she loses her grip on the unlatched door, it swings open, disrupting the bread racks she is hiding behind. They fall and bruise her, but she manages to escape and hide in the grass before the driver sees. After he drives away, Jessie walks down the road and eventually comes to the road marked “37,” which Ma advised her to take. She touches the sign for good luck and continues her journey.
Chapter 13 Summary
Jessie stops to eat the lunch Ma packed and sees that she also packed a wallet with some money. She feels homesick going through the pack and reading the note Ma left in it, but steels herself for what awaits her in the outside world. In the wallet, Jessie also finds Ma’s old driver’s license and a picture of Jessie and Hannah as babies in 1983. She reaches for a handful of water from the small creek nearby, but a yelling man stops her.
Chapter 14 Summary
The man, a sarcastic environmentalist, claims Jessie is on his property and that she should not drink the water because it is contaminated. He suggests she go to a nearby gas station where there are drinks and a payphone. When he offers to let Jessie use his home phone, Jessie declines because Ma told her not to be too trusting of strangers. She walks down the road and finds a gas station. She navigates the store packed with modern snacks and refrigerators and buys a bottle of juice. Outside, she finds a payphone and eventually figures out how to make a call using coins in the wallet. She dials Mr. Neeley’s number, but he does not answer. She nervously decides to wait and try again.
Chapter 15 Summary
As Jessie waits near the phone, a man bumps into her and slyly reads the note with Mr. Neeley’s number. He apologizes, writes something down in a notebook, and uses the phone himself, which makes Jessie suspicious. She runs away and walks for miles in search of another payphone, but to no avail. Eventually, she comes upon some houses and buildings and decides she must be in Indianapolis, where Ma said Mr. Neeley lives. She feels hopeful again until two boys in a car pull up next to her and try to coax her into the vehicle.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
As Jessie faces more obstacles on her journey, she must rely on her wits and instincts to survive. On the cusp of young adulthood, she displays whims of superstition and childish imagination, while also valuing logic and reason. She believes in the magic of language to impact reality: she cannot utter the word “die” because that might empower it to hurt sick children. She acknowledges that the town reverend would not approve her prayer for help because it does not contain what he claims are the proper words (77). Still, she feels a sense of calm and hopeful determination after her impromptu prayer; she understands that words are imbued with the power that you give them. She even senses this when she recalls the wordplay of the riddles her siblings used to tell her.
Interestingly, Jessie is more responsive to strangers’ tones than the content of their words. When she listens to the bread man and guard make small talk about sports, she considers it a “foreign language,” (82) but when she encounters the environmentalist by the creek, she recognizes right away that his voice is sarcastic (97). Although her sheltered existence has made modernity puzzling, she can use familiar vocal cues to understand the outside world.
Understanding familiar behavior helps her be wary of potentially dangerous strangers. She notes that the way the man at the payphone bumps into her is similar to the way two boys from her class knock down girls to look up their skirts. She feels an inherent wrongness in the man’s behavior which helps her escape from a potentially risky situation. Although her fears may border on paranoia—she suspects everyone she encounters of working for Miles Clifton and worries they will capture her—her concerns reflect determination. She has done as Ma has instructed, heeding her warning of not trusting strangers, and is focused on safely getting medicine for the diphtheria epidemic.
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By Margaret Peterson Haddix
