Deep End

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing and sexual content.

“Spontaneity? Only if prearranged. I made a fifteen-year plan the day I graduated from high school, and always intended to stick to it: upwards of one NCAA title, med school, orthopedics, engagement and marriage, compulsory happiness.”

Scarlett’s first-person narration grants the reader access to her interior world. Scarlett is obsessed with order and control. The way she thinks about her life is regimented, planned around “a fifteen-year plan” she made for herself as a teenager. Her desperation to maintain command of her life foreshadows how her self-confidence will falter when her life doesn’t go as planned.

“It had meant so much to me, back in the fall of freshman year. Everything was new and raw and big, but Penelope Ross, world and Pan Am medalist, NCAA champion, held my hand and told me that she felt like I did.”

Scarlett’s friendship with Pen facilitates her Journey Toward Growth, Healing, and Self-Empowerment. Scarlett has relied on Pen since “the fall of freshman year,” because Pen was there for her when she got the twisties and injured herself. Pen assumes the role of her confidante, mentor, and friend—teaching Scarlett that it’s okay to show weakness and ask for help. This passage—found near the novel’s start—captures how Scarlett and Pen’s friendship will grant Scarlett stability throughout the novel.

“What I like to tell myself and whoever asks—Barb, mostly—is that I’m too busy and career driven to date. But my celibate phase has been going on so long, I’m not sure it’s voluntary anymore, and I’d rather not mention that after what happened with my dad, men can be unsettling to be around.”

Scarlett’s complicated feelings about sex at the novel’s start signal the ways in which her sexual desire is impacted by her emotional, physical, and psychological experiences. Scarlett has tried to convince herself that school and work preclude her from pursuing relationships, but this moment of interiority reveals otherwise. Scarlett wants to have new sexual experiences but has yet to process her past trauma—a personal challenge she’ll have to overcome when she enters a sexual relationship with Lukas.