The Leaving

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of kidnapping, trauma, death, child death, mental illness, addiction, and substance use.

“There’s no place like home even if home smells like cat dander and ashes and desperation. Right?”

In the early chapters, Scarlett struggles to find a foothold in her home. She recalls next to nothing from her early childhood; there is much about the house that discomforts her. For example, Scarlett is put off by her mother’s constant smoking, which this quote references with “ashes.” A life-size cut out of Glinda the Good Witch in her little-girl bedroom inspires the allusion to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the line “There is no place like home” (Chapter 4) in Scarlett’s thoughts; more importantly, it suggests Scarlett’s awareness of the situational irony in coming home to a place that offers little comfort or joy. This line of Scarlett’s interior monologue exemplifies a deep third-person limited point of view, and it also develops her character by highlighting her dark sense of humor.

“The endless news coverage, the weird-sad looks she’d get from neighbors and everyone at school next week. She’d be famous, but not in the right way. Mannequin Mom would end up in the hospital again, quick-sanding into depression, and Dad would act like there was nothing wrong when everything about Mom—about all of them—was wrong and had been, probably, since the day Max disappeared.”

Avery’s interior monologue is conveyed through a third-person limited viewpoint. Here, as she dwells over the past and future changes in her family as a result of Max’s disappearance, her tone suggests that Avery has been hardened by her experiences; she speaks realistically (if not critically and pessimistically) about her brother’s potential return.