"A school bus falling from the sky”
The phrase (or a very slightly altered variation) of this quote appears in every single chapter. It is almost but not quite the very first line of the book and almost but not quite the last line of the book. In between it is applied in myriad different ways. Sometimes it is spoken as dialogue and sometimes it is part of the narration. In one instance, it shows up as a story in a newspaper while in one instance it becomes a pluralized optical allusions in which more than one bus appears to be falling. The only time it is actually literally explained—though in figurative terms—is its final appearance when the reader is finally given a concrete object to which the imagery can be applied. What does it mean, exactly? That is up to each reader to decide.
Maybe if Stevie Munson had known yesterday the skateboard’s name was Skitter, he would’ve said something. Maybe if he’d known Pia’s name was Pia. If he’d known she had a big sister named Santi. Maybe if he’d just known those things, he would’ve done something. Something different. Something at all.
The chapter titled “Skitter Hitter” is about a skater girl named Pia and how what happened today might have turned out completely different had at least one or two of a series of “maybe if” propositions which presented themselves the day before gone the other way. The word “maybe” recurs more than thirty times in this single chapter alone with the precise phrase “maybe if” representing about a third of them. The story opens with that two-word phrase and in the 1,000-word plus second-to-last sentence of the story (yes, that corrects reads sentence) “maybe” pops up eleven times, including four of its final thirteen. A pattern of repetitive structure seems to be popping up here, right? Repetition is a cornerstone of the structural foundation of the entire novel in which events are that sights, scenes or events are alluded to early on which are then more fully fleshed out in the later chapters or sometimes even vice versa. Repetition is more than a device, it is a technique strategically implemented in different ways throughout the text.
6. I stop at my locker to get this notebook, which I keep there where it’s safe. So I can hear myself think.
7. The combination to my lock is the same.
8. I get it wrong.
9. I panic and think someone has switched my lock, which means I may never get my notebook.
10. I try the combination again and it works.
11. The combination to my lock is the same.
Clearly, Fatima’s panic accounting for number 9 is misplaced; she finally retrieves the notebook. The personification of the novel’s structural foundation of repetition is Fatima Moss, a young female student suffering from the effects of some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder and/or, possibly, something somewhere along the broad middle of the autism spectrum. This quote is an excerpt from a checklist she makes every single day about the things she sees on her way home from school using the same exact route at the exact same time and never stopping to talk to anyone until she reaches her friend Benni and even not talking to Benni until the list has been completed. Today the checklist is comprised of 37 number items though, obviously, this does not necessarily translate into that many different details.
What Fatima is really on the lookout for, however, are the way things are different each day from the previous. For instance, on this day, Canton Post is noted as sitting at the stop sign holding a weird broomstick with no broom. And two members of a clique of students known collectively as the “Low Cuts” mark a notable enough difference how Ms. Broome’s English class ends the school day as Trista Smith and Britton Burns are so fast out the door they practically knock Sam Mosby over. Sam is never mentioned again while the reader already knows why Trista and Britton were such in a hurry this point and the story behind Canton and his broom-less broomstick will be the focus of the final chapter.
