“No, I knew I could never disappear that moment, because just like with the claw machine, there were so many events pushed up around it that there’d be no way to get it to budge. Everything that had happened before and everything that happened after, those moments were all linked. Smushed together.”

Trent relates his memory of Jared’s death to the rigged claw machine at the local pizzeria. He uses the claw machine as a metaphor for the way that the trauma of Jared’s death has impacted every other part of his brain.

“As soon as he said that, I got that fire in my body, the one that started like a ball in my chest, dense and heavy, then radiated down to my stomach, my legs, my toes, and out to my neck, my face, my ears. Even all the way to my fingernails. Hot, prickly, fire skin, all over.”

This quote introduces fire as a symbol of Trent’s rage. Each time that Trent feels anger, it comes on fast and burns hot throughout his body. Graff uses tactile imagery to recreate the physical feelings of this rage, and Trent listing his different body parts emphasizes the way that it consumes all of him.

“Miss Eveline said I shouldn’t say that, that I killed Jared, because it was an accident, what happened, and that wasn’t the same thing at all. But accident or not, Jared Richards died, and I was the reason, so what was the difference? Either way, I killed him.”

Trent explains his perspective on Jared’s death, believing that it doesn’t matter whether he meant to do harm or not because Jared is dead regardless. This quote shows how Trent carries the guilt over what happened and develops the theme of Guilt and Self-Forgiveness.