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 22-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
When Mr. Franka sends him to the office to pick up a file, Scott encounters Wesley Cobble, who asks Scott what got him sent to the office. Scott replies, “Perambulation” (169). Wesley is impressed and sits at Scott’s table for lunch. The next day, Wesley picks up Scott at the bus stop and gives him a ride to school. Scott is too intimidated to turn down Wesley’s continued rides, but when he arrives late one day because Wesley wanted coffee and cigarettes, Scott tells him that he can only ride with Wesley if they get to school on time. Wesley agrees, partly because Scott lies and says he is on the verge of being expelled for being late.
At play practice, the older stage crew expects Scott to do all the heavy work while they play cards. Meanwhile, Lee notices that Scott is in love with Julia and urges him to talk to her. Instead, he tells Lee that he can’t talk to girls, hurting her feelings. At the next student council meeting, Scott quits after the older students again reject his ideas. Most first-year students, including the president, quit the following week. As runner-up, Julia becomes the freshman student council president. Meanwhile, in Spanish class, Mr. Kamber, an Australian, replaces Ms. De Gaulle.
Chapter 23 Summary
During a long holiday weekend, Bobby’s friends, Wayne and Charlie, stop by the house. They try to persuade Bobby to join their band in Nashville, but Bobby is broke and thinks it’s too much of a long shot.
The newspaper prints Scott’s satire about the football team without Scott’s knowledge; Mouth submitted it when Scott forgot it in the newsroom. In the article, Scott compares Vernon to a hot dog, and Vernon’s friends have been calling him “Wiener boy.” Afraid that Vernon will beat him up, Scott goes home early. The next day, he tries to avoid Vernon, but the quarterback accosts him outside his locker. Just as Vernon draws back his fist to hit Scott, Wesley walks up, scaring Vernon off. After school, Wesley gives Scott a ride home.
At the dance that week, Julia dances with Vernon, girls continue to reject Mouth, Kyle hangs out with the wrestlers, and Scott is alone at the snack table.
Chapter 24 Summary
At school, most of the varsity football players think the satire was funny, but Vernon and his friends want to hurt Scott. Julia and Kelly, who haven’t spoken since Kelly got a part in the play, make up. Lee also starts to talk to Scott again, but Scott thinks she is depressed. He tells her she should go to the dance on Friday to cheer up, but then is worried she will think he is asking her out. Meanwhile, Scott’s Mom has an ultrasound that identifies Smelly as a boy.
Wesley continues to befriend Scott, teaching him how to siphon gas out of other cars and showing up at Scott’s house with a borrowed snowmobile on a snow day. Scott offers Wesley his copy of The Princess Bride, and Wesley accepts, although Scott is afraid that the book will be too complex for his friend. Mr. Kamber quits, and gym teacher Mr. Carvutto subs in Spanish class.
Chapter 25 Summary
At the dance that night, Julia and Vernon argue and then make up. Kyle, who is with the wrestlers, asks Kelly to dance, and she accepts. However, Mouth doesn’t ask anyone to dance; he tells Scott that he has asked every single girl at least once, but none have accepted. When Scott discloses that he doesn’t know anything about girls either, Mouth decides to try again. The next day, Mouth stops by his house and pays back the lunch money Scott loaned him. That night, the family eats dessert together, and Scott notices that his mom looks very tired.
At school the next day, rumors fly about a student who attempted suicide. Scott immediately thinks it is Lee, but it was Mouth who tried to hang himself. Feeling guilty, Scott visits Mouth in the hospital twice during the weekend. At school, when a student makes a joke about the suicide, Scott slams him up against a locker.
Chapter 26 Summary
Scott visits Mouth again at the end of the week; Mouth’s damaged throat has finally healed enough for him to speak. Mouth tells Scott that he tried to kill himself because nobody likes him. Deciding that everyone in the school shares the blame for Mouth’s attempt, Scott persuades Wesley to stop taking money from younger kids at school. A few days later, Mouth writes to Scott, thanking him for being a good friend and telling him he will be attending a different school in the future.
Basketball and baseball players begin to recognize Scott from his newspaper articles, and Scott discovers that he enjoys sports writing. Meanwhile, Spanish class gets another teacher, Ms. Phong, who doesn’t understand English. Two weeks later, Ms. Phong is gone, and Mr. Carvutto is back subbing.
Chapter 27 Summary
Scott stands up for Wesley after school when Wesley collects a debt from three other guys. Wesley tells Scott that he liked The Princess Bride so much that he gave it to his cousin to read.
In Spanish class, Ms. Cabrini, who is fluent in both English and Spanish, replaces Mr. Carvutto, while in English class, Scott learns about the unreliable narrator in English and realizes he may be one.
When Scott writes what he considers his best sports article, he gives a copy to Bobby to read. Bobby lies about reading it and angrily throws the paper across the room when Scott pressures him.
Chapters 22-27 Analysis
In this section, the tone shifts from humorous to serious as Lubar examines the dangers of misjudging people, especially based on stereotypes or appearances. Scott is an unreliable narrator, primarily because his youth means he has limited life experiences. His misjudgments come to light in these chapters, driving him to attempt to change the bullying culture of his school and how he treats others.
Lubar’s characterization of Wesley highlights how much of Scott’s perceptions are based on stereotypes. From the beginning, Scott perceives Wesley as a dangerous figure; when Scott gives him his money, he notes, “The last time I’d seen eyes that deadly, I’d been at the hyena cage at the zoo” (41), a comparison that calls to mind a predator as well as a scavenger. However, by the end of the section, Scott discovers that Wesley is far more complex than he appears. He shows genuine respect for women, particularly Mandy, and not only reads the book that Scott loans him but requests more. He also displays compassion for Mouth after the suicide attempt, telling Scott it was “bad stuff” (204), which is markedly different from the jokes that other students are circulating at school. Scott also stereotypes Lee: Her Goth appearance and obsession with death topics lead him to believe that she is the “weird kid” (197) who attempted suicide. In truth, Lee is comfortable with her self-chosen identity, embracing her unconventionality and quirkiness and telling Scott that she would never kill herself because she has “a zest for life. And far too many unread books” (198).
Lubar exposes the danger of stereotyping in Scott’s misperception of Mouth. Mouth seems resilient to Scott, but he is depressed and crushed by the bullies in school. Most damaging, he is ignored by everyone. When Lee notes that Scott was the only person who talked to Mouth, it is sobering because Scott tries not to talk to him at all. Scott lies to himself about how happy Mouth seems; even when he compares him to the bees whose corpses eventually litter the windowsill, he tells himself that he “shouldn’t feel sorry for him. He didn’t seem to feel any pain” (116). Scott’s insistence that Mouth “seemed happy” (22) eerily echoes his view of Tobie, who died shortly after that observation. Lubar employs Scott’s limited view of how people seem to support the theme of Appearances Versus Reality: Seeing Beyond the Stereotypes, evidenced by the way Scott attempts to make sense of people from the start by categorizing them in lists, such as his Guide to Teacher Types (82) or Field Guide to Bus-Drivers (13).
Change continues to be a primary motif in this section: Scott’s appearance, social standing, friendships, and family dynamic all begin to change, which drives an interior transformation in how Scott views the world and himself. His friendship with Wesley gives him confidence, and he stands up for Wesley in the same way Kyle once stood up for him. Scott’s role as a reporter changes him into an observer, which alleviates the alienation he might have felt in attending dances alone. He also changes physically; lifting weights, handling heavy props and scenery for the play, and doing pushups in Spanish have all given him a muscular physique, and he has achieved some popularity with the athletes in school due to his sports writing and constant attendance at sports events. Finally, Scott engages more with Lee, lessening his obsession with Julia, which also builds his confidence.
However, the most meaningful change occurs when Mouth attempts suicide. Scott confronts his self-lies by visiting Mouth in the hospital, a setting that is sure to trigger his guilt regarding Tobie. Scott’s guilt over Mouth’s suicide stems from his desire to take over Mouth’s book review assignment for the newspaper. Even when Mouth asks Scott to write the review, he refuses because he’d feel “like a vulture” (202). Scott’s self-blame over the pain that Mouth endured daily and his indifference toward Mouth at school inform his decision to help the other targets of bullying at J. P. Zenger High. He convinces Wesley not to take money from the younger students and physically stops a student who jokes about Mouth’s suicide attempt, hoping “that the school had become a bit less stressful for the small and the weak” (211). Although Scott states that “[guys] stand up for people” (155), when he tears the defaced sign off Lee’s locker, it takes recognition of his own passive role in Mouth’s bullying to push him into an active role in combating the bullying culture at school. In doing so, he internalizes his father’s adage that it’s “part of growing up. You do what you have to” (195).
Lubar continues to employ irony to illustrate Scott’s naivety about the world around him. When Scott gains enough confidence to quit the student council, his example leads to a mass exodus of the student council first-year students. However, his unintentional leadership also creates a vacancy that allows Julia to join the council. Also ironic is that Scott’s fear initially drives his relationship with Wesley; Scott is too terrified to refuse Wesley’s overtures—a strange foundation for a friendship. Finally, when Scott goes to the hospital to cheer up Mouth, the situation rapidly reverses when Mouth reassures Scott and tells him to “cheer up” (210).
