Summary
PROLOGUE
The prologue of Noughts & Crosses is told primarily from the third-person limited point of view of Meggie McGregor, hired nanny and good friend of Jasmine Hadley. Jasmine is a Cross, and Meggie is a nought. They watch their children, Sephy and Callum, play together. The women learn that Jasmine’s husband, Kamal, a prominent politician, has just arrived for a surprise visit. Meggie fails to realize that Jasmine used her as an alibi to explain her absence last night, and she unintentionally reveals Jasmine’s deception to Kamal. That night, Jasmine fires her unceremoniously. Meggie’s husband, Ryan, encourages Meggie not to confront Jasmine, but she leaves to do so; that night, their daughter Lynette disappears.
THREE YEARS LATER: CALLUM AND SEPHY
The rest of the book is narrated in alternating first-person chapters, usually in past tense, by Sephy and Callum. Three years after the prologue, Sephy and Callum kiss on the beach where they meet secretly. Sephy finds it a bit icky but comes to enjoy it. Callum dreams of running away, though Sephy (a Cross) doesn’t find their situation all too bad. She’s been helping him prepare for Heathcroft High School—Callum is one of the first four noughts allowed to attend. She’s excited that he’ll be in her classes, but he’s insulted that the noughts will be with younger kids (he’s 15 and she’s 13). Callum encourages Sephy to think of the future, while Sephy is frustrated that they have to sneak around.
When they return to their respective homes, each one denies that they were with the other—their parents have forbidden them from meeting. At dinner with his family, Callum resents that he has to represent all noughts instead of just representing himself. He notices the many differences between his house and Sephy’s—hers is grand, and his is a hovel; she has many luxuries, like orange juice whenever she wants it, and his family is lucky to afford milk. Callum remains hopeful that his time at Heathcroft will allow him to move up in the world.
The night before school starts, Sephy overhears her father, Kamal, now the Home Office Minister, calling noughts “blankers” and complaining about them attending Heathcroft with his daughters. He’s talking to a nought—very unusual for her father—who reports about the actions of the L.M. (Liberation Militia). In Callum’s house, his older siblings, Jude and Lynette, get into a fight—after a traumatic incident, Lynette has been lost in a fantasy world, and on the rare occasions she engages with the real world, she believes she’s a Cross. This really bothers Jude, who also resents that Callum gets to go to Heathcroft. Meggie tells Callum that she’s proud of him no matter what happens at Heathcroft tomorrow.
On the first day of school, Sephy gets her driver, Harry, to drop her off away from the school. When she reaches the front, she sees that there’s a riot against noughts, and one of the new nought students has been hurt. Sephy stops the riot by yelling that the Crosses are acting “worse than animals—like blankers!” Callum is horrified and hurt by Sephy’s use of the slur, though Sephy does apologize on their private beach later. Callum makes her promise to never say “blanker” again, then tells her that they can’t be friends at school, which Sephy doesn’t understand. Both the McGregor and Hadley households watch the news that night, on which Kamal Hadley denounces the L.M. as terrorists, then debates with another minister that societal change must be slow if it’s going to work.
The next day, Sephy saves Callum a seat in History class, but he doesn’t sit with her. She sits at the nought table at lunch, and she meets Shania, who was injured in the riot yesterday—her injury is especially noticeable because bandages are made to match brown skin, not white skin. A teacher forces Sephy to leave the nought table; Callum is so angry he runs from school to the beach, where he hits the sand and wishes it was Sephy’s face. That afternoon, Sephy learns that her previous driver, Harry, was fired because she convinced him to drop her off away from the school yesterday, which allowed her to interfere with the riot, get on the news, and embarrass her father. Callum and Sephy fight on the beach—she calls him a snob for thinking Crosses and noughts can’t mix, then a hypocrite. They apologize, making plans to have a picnic at Celebration Park, but argue again and part on bad terms. The next day, three Cross girls beat Sephy up in the bathroom for sitting with noughts and being a “blanker-lover.”
Analysis
The prologue introduces the two families, the Hadleys and the McGregors, as well as the racial tension that pervades both personal and professional relationships. This sets the scene for Sephy and Callum, who, despite growing up together, are now star-crossed lovers, forbidden to see each other. Their parents' ban on them meeting actually encourages them to meet more intimately, and over the last three years, their friendship has become quite serious, blossoming into an early romance. Their deep connection still doesn't mean they understand each other, though—Callum sees the world quite differently from Sephy, who is still ignorant of a lot of the discrimination present in their society.
The introduction to both families sets up later interpersonal struggles. The McGregors, particularly Jude, are tense and angry. Jude resents that Callum gets to go to a Cross school. After Jasmine fired Meggie three years ago, he had to drop out. He also resents Lynette's belief that she's a Cross. Jude's use of language like "dagger" shows that his hatred of Crosses has progressed further than Callum's disenchantment with the world, contributing to the novel's theme of language being important to a person's development.
The Hadleys, despite living in a beautiful estate, have similar struggles to the McGregors. Sephy's mother, Jasmine, is controlling and inflexible, and Kamal is overheard saying "blanker"—which perhaps influences Sephy to use the same word when she shuts down the riot the next day. Though Sephy believes her use of the word isn't personal and could never apply to Callum, Callum certainly takes it personally. Later in the book, Callum and Sephy will talk about where their relationship started to go wrong, and Sephy will point to this moment as the moment Callum started hating her. (Callum will point out that Sephy started hating him when he stopped being there for her.)
One of the most important moments in these sections is Callum's extreme rage after he runs away from the school. As he punches the beach, he wishes he was smashing Sephy's face. This burst of anger is not out of character for Callum, even though it seems to contradict his otherwise sensitive, intelligent demeanour. Callum is angry, and with good reason—but at this point of the novel, he still has systems (like his family, Heathcroft, and his relationship with Sephy) that help him maintain hope.
