Hopeless

Seventeen-year-old Sky Davis, with the help of her friend Six, sneaks some boys into her bedroom through the window for an impromptu party of movies, ice cream, and casual making-out—but no sex. “I am not a s***” (4), Sky says, using a slur for a sexually active woman. Six will soon leave for a study abroad semester in Italy. Sky’s adoptive mother, Karen, is gone for the evening. Sky notes how her stepmother resists technology—they have no television, computer, Internet, or smartphones: “[Karen] believes technology is the root of all evil” (6). Sky has been homeschooled her whole life but is preparing in a few days to begin her senior year at the local high school, determined to find out what high school is really like.

As one of the boys tries to slip a hand up Sky’s shirt, Sky wishes only that she could feel something—anything—but she does not. She simply studies the plastic stars stuck on her ceiling. Sky has considered she might be gay. When the boy, Grayson, begins to fiddle with her jeans, Sky stops him. Frustrated, the boys depart the same way they came in. Just as they leave, Karen returns. Sky jokingly assures Karen that she has kept her virginity intact for another night.

Sky prepares for her first day. She is uneasy but is determined to make school work. As she approaches the school, she sees a lone runner on the school’s outdoor track. Sky is a long-distance runner herself and has thought about joining the school’s track team.

Sky knows she will be the new kid and subjected to all sorts of hazing. Because she is friends with Six, who has a reputation for being sexually active, Sky knows she will be defined as sexually active herself. She finds a note attached to her locker apologizing because her locker could not come with a stripper pole and dollar bills. As she navigates through the corridors, she tells herself not to cry and not to give in to the whispers she hears or the laughs directed at her.

At lunch she meets Brecklin, a cheery gay student and something of a social misfit himself. He is interested in “making an alliance” with Sky (20). The way he sees it, the two are a natural alliance against the “idiots, jocks, bigots, and b*****s” (21). Sky accepts his offer to “become my very bestest friend” (22).

When Sky stops at a convenience store for coffee after school, she meets Dean Holder, the kid who was running the track that morning. Holder is returning to school, rumor has it, after spending a year in juvenile detention for assaulting a student. Sky is entranced by Holder’s tousled dark hair, his dazzling teeth, his lithe body, and his dimples. “He’s beautiful…in a tough-guy sense” (27). Sky notices Holder is staring at her. He introduces himself and tells Sky she looks like someone he knows, which Sky dismisses as a lame ice-breaker. They exchange names, and Sky cannot help but notice an elaborate tattoo on Holder’s forearm that reads, “Hopeless.” Oddly, before they depart, Holder asks whether Sky is her real name.

When Six visits that afternoon, Sky confesses her attraction to Holder and how she cannot stop thinking about him. Six, though happy that Sky is feeling lust so strongly, cautions her about the rumors involving Holder—his sister died by suicide about a year ago, and, reportedly, he assaulted a gay student and was sent to juvenile detention. “He’s not boyfriend material” (37), Six warns.

Sky is out running when she meets Holder again. As they share a bottle of water, Sky eagerly watches Holder’s lips as they cover the opening of the bottle, thinking, “We’re practically kissing” (41). She feels the itch of physical attraction even as Holder apologizes if he came across as creepy at the convenience store. They run together, way beyond Sky’s normal three-mile distance. Holder suggests she try out for track.

When Holder suggests they run together every day, Sky suddenly faints. Holder carries her home and introduces himself to Karen. When Sky comes to, her face bruised and her one eye blackened, she sheepishly apologizes and says the heat got to her. They agree to run together the next morning: “I’m completely losing any form of self-control.” If this is sexual attraction, Sky thinks, she hates this “beautiful, magical feeling” (53).

Six comes through the window to give Sky a gift before Six leaves for Italy: a prepaid cellphone so they can stay in touch. Sky struggles to understand how much her life will change with her best friend gone.

Sky and Holder go running the next morning. Holder says some things that indicate to Sky that he has been checking up on her and finding out who she is. Holder assures her she does not need to feel uncomfortable around him. Sky, determined to find out more about Holder, asks him flat out why he had to leave school. He skirts around his time in juvenile detention and the fight that sent him there. Sky asks how she knows he won’t just drop out again. He replies, “Because you’re here” (66).

Before first period, Sky is aware her friendship with Holder is becoming a school-wide rumor. In English class, the teacher compels Holder to stand up and introduce himself. Sky and Holder meet at lunch. Sky tells him he is too “intense” and that he acts too “weird” around her (71). She tells him she knows that he committed a hate crime against a gay student, and because of that, she would never consider hooking up with him.

Between periods, Holder accosts Sky and asks whether she is dating someone. Sky, taken aback by his proprietary attitude given that they have only known each for two days, tells him to back off.