Vicious

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Chapters 28-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 28 Summary

Back in her room at the hotel, Sydney has trouble falling asleep. She wishes Serena (her older sister by seven years) was there to stroke her hair before she remembers that Serena has changed and would no longer comfort her. Sydney practices a counting exercise and finally falls asleep.

Chapter 29 Summary

A year before the present-day confrontation building between Victor and Eli, Sydney and Serena go for a picnic on the frozen lake by their house. The warmer March weather causes the ice to crack, sending both of them plunging into the freezing water. They manage to get out of the lake and are brought to the hospital, where both miraculously recover. Though Sydney seems fine, her body temperature is too low and her heart rate too slow. The doctors insist she stay for observation. They want Serena to stay, too, but Serena declares she’s leaving and no one stops her.

Sydney stays for a week. One day, she hears a heated discussion in a hospital room and stops beside a dead body on a stretcher to listen. She leans against the stretcher and touches the body, which starts twitching. Later, she goes to the morgue to see if what happened was real and, after an hour of experimenting, learns she can “raise the dead” (144).

Chapter 30 Summary

Sydney wakes the next morning at the hotel and finds Victor and Mitch in the kitchen. She asks Victor about the news article she saw last night. He produces it, and Sydney identifies Eli as “the one who shot me” (146).

Chapter 31 Summary

Home from the hospital, Sydney shares her new ability to raise the dead with Serena. Serena tells Sydney not to tell anyone else, and from that moment on, Sydney “felt no desire to share the strange news with anyone but Serena” (147). For the next year, Sydney keeps her ability a secret while Serena is off at college in Merit. Serena’s cancels all her visits home, which Sydney resents. Finally, Serena invites Sydney to come visit her at Merit. Sydney begrudgingly agrees, and Serena sounds overly excited. Serena mentions she wants Sydney to meet a new friend.

Chapters 28-31 Analysis

These chapters bring the characters full circle in terms of their connection to one another via Eli. Eli is confirmed as a murderer who tried to kill both Sydney and Victor, and Eli’s actions reveal the monster he has become in the last 10 years. He believes all EOs, except himself, are abominations, even Sydney, who is a child. With the exception of Victor, every other EO Eli encounters died in an accident and made a miraculous recovery of which abilities just happened to be a part. Eli sought death, which means he is murdering people for wanting to live even though he purposefully tried to die an acquire similar abilities. Schwab presents Eli’s hypocrisy as an indication of his villainous nature, despite his delusions of heroism.

Chapter 29 details Sydney and Serena’s deaths and recoveries, hinting at Serena’s EO ability—charming others so they let her do what she wants—for the first time. In subsequent chapters, Serena meets Eli and finds a type of solace in his theory that EOs are missing something when they come back. She feels different after the accident but doesn’t understand how or why. Sydney’s observation in Chapter 28 offers a possible explanation. Even before Serena agreed to hand Sydney over to Eli, which will happen in the following chapters, Serena was more dismissive and manipulative toward her sister. Sydney’s thought that the comforting Serena from before is gone suggests Serena lost her compassion, which matches her power. Getting one’s way regardless of what anyone else wants requires one to sacrifice caring about others.

These chapters show Sydney looking up to and wanting to be like Serena, an unhealthy form of hero worship. Sydney’s desire to please her sister coupled with her uncertainty around her EO ability lead her to trust Serena when she invites Sydney to Merit. Sydney’s idolization of her sister could have gotten her truly killed, demonstrating the danger of thinking too highly of someone, and complicating notions of heroes and villains even on the personal scale.