Prep

“At soccer practice, I worried that I would miss the ball, when we boarded the bus for games at other schools, I worried that I would take a seat by someone who didn’t want to sit next to me, in class I worried I would say a wrong or foolish thing. I worried that I took too much food at meals […]. I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.”

Lee uses repetition to highlight her concern over how she appears at Ault. By repeating “I worried” multiple times, Lee conveys the agony of building a self at Ault. Lacking a stable persona, she doesn’t want people to pay attention to her. Conversely, she doesn’t want to feel isolated.

“Most people here, they’re not real. But you’re real.”

Little Washington’s perception of Lee is ironic. Lee doesn’t want a “real” self but an identity that adheres to the constructed Ault world. Nevertheless, Little juxtaposes Lee with the other students to create a conflict between the two. Like Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, Little openly scorns Ault and its students, and she even echoes his diction, as Holden constantly refers to people as “phonies.”

“It’s like my friends and I are targets. We’re being discriminated against.”

Dede’s response to the thefts satirizes prejudice discourse, as her diction turns her and Aspeth—both affluent white girls—into “targets” and victims of discrimination. Arguably, they are targets, not because they come from a historically marginalized group but because they come from privilege. The twist is ironic.