72 pages • 2 hours read
Nina LaCourWe Are Okay
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
In a haze, Marin arrives at the airport. She tells the woman at the ticket counter that she has a reservation but doesn’t know her flight number. When asked to spell her name, she apologizes and says she cannot. Internally, she replays her interview with the police. They find her flight, for which she is two weeks early, and get her onto an earlier one.
In New York, Marin wilts in the heat. She takes a bus from the airport and gets off at the first motel she sees. The room is dirty and damaged, and the smell is “worse than stale. Worse than unclean” (181). In the room next door, the woman starts howling. Hungry, Marin walks to the diner next door to eat. When she returns to the motel, she asks her neighbor to let her know if he sees an old man outside of her room. Three nights later, she starts hearing a tapping noise coming from the ceiling and starts to feel as though Gramps is haunting her. She can hear him humming and singing every time she turns on the faucet, so she “[stops] using the water” (183). Day after day, she walks across the street to the diner and eats, otherwise staying in her room, suffering and trying to convince herself that she’s okay.
Chapter 23 Summary
In the aftermath of Marin’s confession, Mabel asks her again to come home for a few days. Marin finds it impossible to return to a place that caused her such pain. She fantasizes about a goodbye with her grandfather that could have resulted if he’d gotten treatment and died peacefully in the hospital. Marin tells Mabel she’ll come at some point, but she can’t yet. Mabel says that she should have flown to New York much sooner rather than limiting her attempts at contact to the unanswered calls, texts, and voicemails.
They brush their teeth together in the bathroom. Marin realizes that even though their reflections are sad and tired, they also look young. She remembers the conversation and liveliness between them when they used to brush their teeth together before bed. She thinks, “I didn’t return Mabel’s nine hundred texts because I knew we’d end up like this no matter what. What happened had broken us, even if it wasn’t about us at all” (187). Mabel, she thinks, will still be Mabel after this visit, even if Marin will never again be Marin. They go to bed, and Mabel quietly says that she started dating Jacob because she was trying to move on. She sent Marin a text message—“Remember Nebraska?”—the night before the date and wouldn’t have gone if Marin had responded. Mabel says that she’s happy with Jacob now but that she wouldn’t be dating him at all if Marin hadn’t disappeared. Marin apologizes and thinks about how much she hurt Mabel. She thanks Mabel for coming; at some point, Mabel sneaks out of bed, presumably to call Jacob, and doesn’t return for a long time.
Chapter 24 Summary
When Marin awakes, she finds Mabel’s bed empty and panics, thinking she’s left without saying goodbye. The duffel bag on the floor lets her know this isn’t true, but she still has to work at not crying. Despite Mabel’s protests about not having a gift for her in New York, Marin insists on giving Mabel the ceramic bell she’d bought her. She walks Mabel out to her cab, and they hug for a long time. Mabel asks a few times if Marin is sure about not coming back to California then gets into her cab and leaves.
Marin thinks about a time when she’d temporarily lived with Gramps’s friend Jones, his wife Agnes, and his daughter Samantha while Gramps was hospitalized. Driven by a sudden urge to speak to Samantha, she tries to contact her at work, but her salon is closed. Next, she calls Jones, though she remains awkwardly silent and unsure of what to say. Jones tells her that he has everything—“the real stuff”—from the house (195). Marin asks about the letters, and Jones confirms he has those; she asks him to get rid of them but to keep the photographs. Jones tells her that the hospitalization had been for a mental illness rather than a physical illness; he regrets not realizing it had gotten so bad again. When they get off the phone, Marin opens the envelope Hannah had left her. Inside is a paper chain of snowflakes.
Chapters 22-24 Analysis
In these chapters, we see Marin at her lowest point: leaving the police station through the back door and holing up miserably in a terrible motel in New York. The chapters in the present, however, show some much-needed emotional growth from Marin. She understands why she didn’t ever respond to Mabel’s attempts to contact her, sees a more hopeful future in which she is able to go to Javier and Ana’s house, and even reaches out and makes a connection with Jones. She is also better able to articulate the complex feelings of pain and betrayal surrounding her grandfather’s secrets. The pain and loss she feels at Mabel’s departure suggest that her ability to feel connected to others has been renewed. Marin is also able to clearly assess why she disappeared and the effect it had on Mabel.
The chapters set in the present are in stark contrast to those set in the summer, as LaCour juxtaposes Marin at her lowest point to a Marin who has come to realize she’s not as alone as she felt. Before Mabel came, when Marin was isolated from her friends and community, she was unable to heal; though Mabel’s visit cannot counter the months of pain and loneliness Marin has experienced, the renewal of this connection enables Marin to take steps in the right direction.
