Prep

Lee Fiora is the protagonist and the narrator. The book is in her voice and is a testament to what she sees, hears, and thinks. Presumably, the reader takes her side and wants her to figure out how to fit in at Ault and make the experience less tormenting and more positive. She is funny, quirky, analytical, and self-conscious. During the thefts, Lee showcases several of her traits when she reveals, “I wondered if it was possible that I was the thief. What if I had opened Dede’s drawer in my sleep? Or what if I had amnesia, or schizophrenia, and couldn’t even account for my own behavior?” (22).

Lee’s relationship with herself is tenuous. She ditches her relatively healthy, working-class Indiana identity and tries to make a new one for the elite Ault, a process that maps the theme of Identity Construction. By junior year, she declares, “My Ault self was now my real self” (251). Yet what her Ault self entails remains elusive. As Dede meanly but not inaccurately tells her, “You’re exactly the same as you were when we were freshmen” (368).

Lee is also an unreliable narrator.