The Perfect Escape

These chapters reveal more of Kate’s Complex Family Dynamics and her struggle with loneliness. While she does not have the multicultural pressures and financial difficulties that Nate must navigate, her priorities are profoundly affected by her experience of losing one parent while feeling suffocated by the other—a complication that Nate’s family dynamics do not have. Thus, while Nate worries about making money to help his family, she emphasizes the importance of enjoying life rather than solely pursuing money for its own sake. When Nate rattles off his ambitious goals for the future, all of which are centered around money and career success, she exclaims that life’s true goal should be happiness and makes Nate promise to try to enjoy life. This exchange marks a significant difference in the teens’ individual approaches to Cultivating Aspirations and Dreams, for although Nate outwardly agrees with her, he nonetheless does not take his promise seriously until the end of the novel, when he finally realizes the consequences of prioritizing money over more valuable assets such as love and friendship. In these early chapters, however, the interaction between the two young people highlights the level to which one’s upbringing inherently shapes their dreams and values. Because Nate has grown up in poverty while witnessing his more privileged classmates flaunt their success, his world is shaped by a powerful ambition to overcome his current financial circumstances, and he perceives this to be his greatest challenge. Kate, however, has grown up with easy access to wealth, so she can literally afford to focus on what makes her happy: pursuing a career in theater. Still, her father’s controlling behavior and manipulative money habits make her want to seek out her own money in order to achieve financial independence and the freedom to pursue her dreams on her own terms. She has seen firsthand how ambition has corrupted her father, and she wants Nate to promise not to end up like this. Her prescience in this regard becomes more meaningful as the novel’s primary conflicts continue to unfold.

Kate’s lonely home life also reveals the depths of her depression and grief. She admits that lately her only “friend” has been her butler robot, derisively stating, “I used to have more friends and go to parties. But then my life went to shit, and then my number one life companion became Jeeves. Welcome to Hermitville, population: me” (104). Her self-isolation after her mother’s death has affected everything from her self-esteem to her clothing choices. Her nicer, more colorful clothes are now a painful memory of shopping trips with her mother, and her subdued current style is borne out of “utility” because she “just [doesn’t] care anymore” (88). This shift is a clear sign of the apathy that often comes with depression, and it shows why Kate is later so grateful for Raina’s patient friendship. Even as she whimsically downplays her recent period of grief, she also sincerely thanks her friend, stating, “Thanks for throwing me an inner-tube floatie before I drowned in loneliness” (104). The death of Kate’s mother has taught her that human connection only brings pain, loss, and abandonment. This misguided conviction is further enhanced by the heartbreak emanating from her strained relationship with her father, who does not support Kate in her endeavors, trying instead to control her actions and dictate her future to an unreasonable degree. Therefore, Kate’s friendship with Raina and Nate sets the stage for Kate to learn that connections are not always problematic. Although Kate initially sees her budding connection with Nate as a liability, Kate will eventually come to accept that Nate and her other friends are a vital support system to help her achieve her goals, not hinder them like her father has.