60 pages • 2 hours read
David LubarSleeping Freshmen Never Lie
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A 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
In October, a new girl transfers to Zenger High School. Scott notices Lee in his homeroom due to her appearance: She has safety pins in her face and green hair. At lunch, she sits with the popular girls even though they glare at her. Scott runs for the student council because Julia is running as well. Meanwhile, Wesley Cobble takes Mouth’s lunch money, so Scott buys Mouth’s lunch that day. When Mouth later tries to sit at their lunch table, Kyle tells him that all the seats are taken. Mouth tells Scott he doesn’t have time to sit because he needs to work on his speech for the student council election anyway.
In his journal, Scott discloses that he didn’t like to read until he was in the hospital for a broken arm in fifth grade. He shared the hospital room with another boy, Tobie, who gave him a book to read. Although Scott didn’t read the book, he pretended he did so Tobie would be happy. After Tobie died, his parents sent Scott a box of Tobie’s books. Feeling guilty, Scott read every one of the books in the box and developed a love of reading.
Chapter 13 Summary
Scott gives his election speech, asking students to use only one of their three votes to vote for him. Although he wins the election, both Julia and Mouth lose. The new girl, Lee, jokingly tells him that his speech moved her to tears.
Mr. Franka introduces poetry in English class, and Scott discovers that he loves verse, incorporating couplets into his journal.
The football team loses again, and Scott writes the article as an infomercial. The next Friday, neither Patrick nor Kyle comes to the game, but they do persuade Scott to go to the harvest dance the following week.
Chapter 14 Summary
While Scott continues to learn more about poetry in English class, his main concern is the dance on Friday; however, once at the dance, Kyle, Patrick, and Scott spend their time drinking soda and eating chips, never once asking any of the girls to dance. Mouth asks girls to dance, but none accept. Julia dances all night with Vernon, which makes Scott feel like “someone was cutting small holes in my lungs with a sharp knife” (117). The next day, Patrick tells Scott that he is moving to Texas in a month.
In English, Scott learns about mixed metaphors and oxymorons. He decides that Vernon and Julia are an oxymoron because they don’t belong together. At home, Scott’s Mom reassures him that all girls go through a bad-boy phase, but the smart ones grow out of it fast.
Chapter 15 Summary
In gym class, Scott works out in the freezing cold and snow flurries. When he attends his first student council meeting, the older kids ignore the first-year student’s suggestion on how to improve school spirit. Later, Lee tells Scott that his favorite author, S. Morgenstern, authored another book besides The Princess Bride. After their conversation, they progress to exchanging nods in the hallways as they pass.
Although Scott vows to talk to Julia, he can’t work up the courage. Dad advises him to start with “hi.” The next day, Scott approaches Julia, but his voice cracks when he tries to speak. Horrified, he walks past her.
On Patrick’s last day, Scott only has enough time to say a quick goodbye before catching the bus, and he realizes that he may never see Patrick again.
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
The predominant motif in this section is change. Scott faces changes at school and school and physical changes within himself as when his voice begins to change. In gym class, Scott complains about the brutal cold outside but makes no mention of how strenuous the exercises are, indicating that physically he is growing stronger. In English class, Scott learns that he loves poetry and begins to use poetic devices in his writing at home, sharpening his writing and critical thinking skills.
Scott is also facing change in his relationships; as his extracurricular obligations increase, his time with his friends decreases. Kyle and Patrick stop attending the football games, and Kyle begins to bully Scott; every time Scott mentions the newspaper, Kyle throws balls at him or sneers at him for having nerdy interests. In this dynamic, Lubar explores the limitations of Scott’s early friendships and foreshadows that those relationships may not survive their changing interests in high school. However, the dissolution of Scott’s elementary school group opens the way for new relationships when Scott begins talking with Lee, who shares his passion for books. From the beginning, however, he is self-conscious, worrying that other students will believe they are friends. Even though she introduces him to The Silent Gondoliers, he hurries away because “she was just too weird” (122). Scott’s refusal to explore a friendship with Lee, who looks different on the surface but shares a common interest with him, reflects his resistance to change, which Lubar also highlights in Scott’s resentment toward his unborn sibling at home.
Lubar also examines the bullying culture at the high school, particularly in relation to Mouth. Because Mouth is continually seeking to make connections with other students, he is vulnerable to rejection and derision. Scott recognizes this, and even though he refuses to think of himself as Mouth’s friend, he still is one of the few students who will talk with him. When Wesley Cobble takes Mouth’s lunch money, Scott loans him enough to buy lunch. Kyle, however, prevents Mouth from sitting at their table when Mouth subsequently attempts to eat lunch with Scott. Much like Scott, Mouth covers up his hurt by pretending he doesn’t care, saying he must work on his election speech anyway. Mouth’s lie is exposed at the election when Scott realizes that Mouth’s speech is entirely improvised. Scott’s nature is goodhearted; he empathizes with Mouth but also yearns to fit in with other, less marginal students. This creates an internal conflict where he strives to straddle the fence between doing what is right with Mouth and fitting in with more popular students, a conflict that repeats in his relationship with Lee. Scott deceives himself that he has more in common with a bully like Kyle than with Mouth and Lee.
Lubar further exposes Scott’s penchant for lying to himself when he links Mouth to Tobie in this section. In Chapter 4, at the bus stop after an exhausting first day in high school, Mouth tells Scott that “high school is awesome” even though he “looked like he’d been forced through a meat grinder at least twice” (22). Despite Mouth’s appearance, which indicates that he was bullied most of the day, Scott states that Mouth “seemed happy” (22). Significantly, these are the same words that Scott uses to describe Tobie. Scott pretends to have read the book Tobie gave to him, a pretense that Scott says “didn’t matter. He seemed happy” (101). Scott accepts the facade that the boys present, lying to himself that they are happy despite the evidence to the contrary. Examining the more realistic view that Mouth is unhappy, Lubar compares him to a bee trapped in a window when he asks girls to dance with him: “He’d buzz over and explore a spot, discover there was no opening, drop back and hover for a while, then try another spot,” ominously noting that “The bees never find a way out. Their dried corpses litter the windowsills’’ (116). By connecting Mouth to Tobie as well as comparing him to the doomed bees, Lubar is foreshadowing that Mouth, like Tobie, may be a tragic figure in the story.
