Smiles
The opening pages introduce the reader to a young girl named Wen. She is reticent to smile because she required surgery to repair a cleft lip. This intimate familiarity with the difficulty of smiling has given her insight into others whose "smiles are often cruel and mocking, like how a bully’s grin is the same as a fist." The simile compares an insincere smile with a false front hiding danger. This metaphor becomes foreshadowing.
Dangerous Tools
Four strangers arrive to turn young Wen's life upside down. She is still not certain of the danger, but metaphorical imagery is used to clarify its potential "The shorter woman wears a black shirt, and at the end of her wooden handle is a pinwheel of raking claws, crooked metal fingers jammed together into a large ragged ball so her tool looks like the most dangerous lollipop in the world." The simile comparing the frightening unknown tool carried by the woman to a lollipop indicates Wen's youth and lack of experience. At the same time, it also suggests that she is still not fully aware of the danger the visitors represent.
Homophobia
Wen has two dads and this domestic situation eventually causes them to wonder if they have been targeted for harassment and threats by an anti-gay former antagonist. "The woman behind Eric squeezes his shoulders and talks, but he only hears some of what she says. `—not one homophobic bone in my body.'” The reference to a bone is a metaphor for the lack of character which causes one to hate someone simply because of their sexual preference. The novel's premise is such that Wen's two dads are trying to come up with a logical reason for the behavior of the strangers. A lifetime of dealing with irrational fear and prejudice leads them to consider gay-bashing a reasonable alternative.
The Apocalypse
The strangers insist—as in the example above—that homophobia is not their mission. Rather they have arrived for a human sacrifice to save the world from ending. “The skies will fall and crash to the earth like pieces of glass. And then the final, everlasting darkness will descend over humanity and all the species of the earth—” The simile of the sky breaking like glass conveys a sense of the fragility of the entire situation. Darkness, meanwhile, has become the defining metaphor of the modern age which is often used in this manner. It is a metaphor efficiently signaling something apocalyptic without defining the precise details.
The Television
The apocalypse seems to be real as the television screen is overpowered by images of planes falling from the sky. One of Wen's two dads swings a sledgehammer at it, leaving it "an open mouth ringed in rows of small, asymmetrical, jagged teeth and it once spoke of unimaginable places and things." The destruction of the television is painted in florid prose overflowing with metaphorical imagery. This particular example illustrates the significance of the contact is provided with the outside world. The personification of the television as an actual mouth communicating information becomes an extreme symbolic demonstration of the trope of killing the messenger that delivers unwanted news.
