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50 pages 1 hour read

Suzanne Park

The Perfect Escape

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Chapters 20-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 20 Summary: “Nate”

Eventually, Nate and Kate stop to build a campfire with a flint striker that Kate has brought; they also eat their pre-packed dinners. Kate finally shares her plan to move to New York with the prize money if they win. Nate tells her about his family’s financial struggles and admits that he needs the money to help his family keep their house. He enjoys how easy it is to talk to Kate. She then tells him about her mother’s death and explains that she blames her father for refusing to get timely medical treatment for her mother. Nate holds her as she cries. Suddenly, they hear zombies approaching and smell their foul stench. They quickly grab their things and run. Eventually, they reach a clearing, exhausted but safe. Kate makes torches out of tree branches before they keep moving.

Chapter 21 Summary: “Kate”

Kate and Nate run into another team, a man and woman who are popular survivalists from a show called American Muscle Hustle. The team tries to intimidate Nate and Kate by attacking them with weapons. Nate fights back using his Krav Maga skills and steals the man’s bo staff before discovering that the woman is holding a “wanted” flyer. The flyer is offering $5,000 for Nate’s wristband and $1,000 for Kate’s. Nate is shocked when he realizes that the handwriting on the flyer is Annie’s.

Chapter 22 Summary: “Nate”

In the morning, Kate and Nate stumble upon an abandoned campsite. They encounter the same man and woman again, but this time the two have no wristbands, indicating that they have been disqualified. The couple warns Nate and Kate about the team from which they got the flyer; presumably, it is Peter and Annie. Kate angrily storms off, and Nate follows. Their wristbands flash a message notifying them that 24 hours in the competition remain. There are still 30 active participants. When Nate stops to relieve himself, he is surprised by Peter and Annie’s sudden appearance. Annie tearfully reveals that Peter recruited her to help convince Nate to accept his deal. Peter reveals that it’s not a coincidence that Nate’s father lost his IT consulting job at Zeneration. (Zeneration is the company sponsoring Zombiegeddon, and Peter’s dad is the vice president.) Peter wants to get Nate disqualified from Zombiegeddon so that he will be forced to accept Peter’s money and sabotage his own grades. Peter pulls out a taser and aims at Nate, but Nate attacks him first. They struggle until Kate uses her stun gun on Peter, disabling him. Annie tries to apologize and disarms both her and Peter’s wristbands, disqualifying them from the competition. She claims that she really did like Nate, but he doesn’t believe her.

Nate and Kate run away after Annie warns them of incoming zombies. Soon, Kate trips and twists her ankle. When they realize that they are trapped, they suddenly notice a cave. Nate uses fireworks that he found at the abandoned campsite earlier to distract the zombies while they hide in the cave, terrified. As they wait for the zombies to pass, they share a kiss and reveal their feelings for each other. Kate goes to explore the rest of the cave. Suddenly, she calls out for help, and Nate tries to reach her.

Chapter 23 Summary: “Nate”

Nate wakes up to find himself indoors, tied to a chair, and blindfolded. He has been kidnapped from the cave by Robbie Anderson-Steele, whom Nate finally realizes is Kate’s father. Robbie tells Nate that tomorrow, his company, Digitools, will be officially merging with Zeneration, the competition’s sponsor. Because Kate is his daughter, Robbie cannot allow her to win the competition; it would be bad for the new company’s image. He also reveals that the zombie robots and wristbands are products of Digitools; they have been collecting biometric data on the competitors for government military testing. Robbie plans on announcing that the competition teams will now be solo participants. He offers Nate a deal, telling him to abandon Kate and compete alone. If Nate does so, he will receive an additional $20,000 on top of the prize money if he wins. Conveniently for Robbie, the nondisclosure agreement that Nate signed when entering the competition prevents him from disclosing any of this information to Kate. Robbie claims that he is protecting Kate by not telling her about his plan or the pending merger. His team has sedated Kate back in the cave and has treated her injured ankle.

Nate knows that the money Robbie is offering could help both him and Kate in the long run, so he forms a plan and accepts Robbie’s deal, demanding the money in cryptocurrency immediately. Robbie accepts, and Nate feels sad and ashamed. He accuses Robbie of not supporting Kate while her mother was dying. Robbie then angrily demands that Nate be sedated and taken back to the cave.

Chapter 24 Summary: “Kate”

Kate wakes in pain with a fuzzy memory; Nate is already awake nearby. She senses something different in his voice as she questions him. Their wristbands announce the splitting of the teams into solo participants and reveal that eight teams—or rather, 16 people—now remain in the game. Nate tells her that he wants to split up because her injured ankle will slow him down. Kate feels hurt and abandoned. She cries as Nate leaves her alone in the cave.

Chapter 25 Summary: “Nate”

Nate feels guilty and ashamed for lying to Kate, but he knows that this is the only way he can help her. While hiding, he witnesses four other contestants betray each other. Three get disqualified, while the last one runs away without his map. Nate continues walking for hours before taking a break. Suddenly, Kate surprises him. She ran into the other contestant and traded her map for his stash of painkillers and steroids; this trade helped her to move on from the cave. Nate knows that it would be easy to overtake Kate and steal her wristband, but he doesn’t. Before walking away, she tells him that after the competition is over, she never wants to see him again.

Chapter 26 Summary: “Kate”

Kate uses her anger at Nate to push forward in the competition, following the map to a narrow cliffside trail. On the cliff, she eventually finds Nate crouched in fear; his phobia of heights has paralyzed him. He claims that he is considering taking off his wristband in order to quit and be rescued. Kate convinces him to stay in the competition and helps him calm down. Together, they slowly follow the trail as they realize that falling could be deadly. They also discuss their plans after the competition. Nate tries to talk to Kate about money but is interrupted by an approaching zombie.

Chapters 20-26 Analysis

As they continue to participate in the competition, Nate and Kate’s friendship quickly evolves into a deeper connection as they work together in Cultivating Aspirations and Dreams. Even their early interactions foreshadow a smooth chemistry, as they find it easy to talk and bond over serious topics even as they protect each other from competition-related threats. As Nate’s narration states, “I had a strong sense of responsibility to keep us both safe. Even though she was plenty capable on her own” (199). Likewise, when Nate is cornered by Peter, Kate jumps in to save him, and when they are ambushed by the American Muscle Hustle team, they work together to defeat their opponents. As their growing bond culminates in a passionate kiss in a cave, it is clear that the author has used this nonstandard setting to suspend the normal social rules of dating and courtship. With the introduction of the survivalist setting and the unconventional stressor of robotic zombies to season the plot with some additional tension, it is much easier to craft scenarios fraught with powerful emotion, thereby accelerating the romantic involvement between the two.

Once this bond has been firmly established, the author then brings in the standard romance trope of the “third act breakup,” using Robbie’s unscrupulous behavior to introduce a plot twist that compels Nate to violate Kate’s trust and break up their team for what he believes are noble reasons. This breakup is understandably painful for both characters, but it also shows both Nate and Kate where their true priorities lie. Both have been extremely dedicated to winning the competition, and even though Nate’s decision to bow to Robbie’s coercion and abandon Kate causes inevitable hard feelings, they still choose to support each other in critical moments. This dynamic becomes prominent in several crucial scenes. For example, although Kate accuses Nate of being driven by the promise of money, he still refrains from overpowering an injured Kate when he has the opportunity to remove her from the competition. As his narration states, “It would be easy for me to take everything she had, along with her stun gun and backpack of supplies, with a swift tackle, headlock, or choke hold. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Because it was Kate” (238). Similarly, Kate chooses to help Nate on the cliff despite being angry and previously telling herself that the breakup “[m]ade [her] want to fight. Made [her] want to win. Just to see Nate lose” (239). Despite the issues that now lie between them, they willingly work together to successfully navigate the trail down from the treacherous cliff, and the terrain itself becomes a metaphor for their more abstract dynamics, foreshadowing the fact that they will also be able to avoid the figurative cliffs in their lives and chart a way forward together.

Additionally, Nate finally stands up to Peter in this section of the novel, laying this earlier conflict to rest and officially rejecting Annie’s romantic interest in him once and for all. From a storytelling standpoint, it is important for the author to resolve this lesser conflict, as the overarching conflict of Robbie’s extreme manipulations must necessarily take center stage from this point on. Yet it is also important to note that the final scene with Peter and Annie also provides a catharsis for Nate since he is finally in a situation that allows him to respond decisively and satisfyingly to Peter’s ongoing abuse. Thus, the author once again uses the survivalist setting to transcend standard rules of behavior. In the “real world,” it would be entirely unacceptable for Nate to physically attack Peter, but in this time and place, it is both permissible and expected, especially given Peter’s hateful bullying throughout the novel.

These minor conflicts pave the way for Nate’s dramatic encounter with Robbie Anderson-Steele; the resulting exchange—and his status as a captive—ultimately shatter his hero-worship for the tech mogul. Nate realizes that his reverence for Robbie’s persona and accomplishments was both misplaced and superficial, having about as much depth as the cardboard cutout of Robbie that is stored in Nate’s closet. As Robbie reveals the lengths he is willing to go to in order to maintain control over both his business empire and his family life, the scene reinforces his status as the ultimate antagonist of the novel: one whose destructive actions far exceed those of robotic zombies or a petty school bully. Yet even now, when Nate is at his lowest moment, the author takes care to provide him with a spark of agency, and to this end, the mention of cryptocurrency foreshadows his growing sense moral superiority over Robbie. This realization gives him a paradoxical form of power, as the very fact that he feels justified in making demands of his captor reveals that his inner strength has not been compromised by his current difficult circumstances. Thus, the narrative implies that although Robbie has won the battle, Nate (and by extension, Kate) will win the war. 

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