56 pages • 1 hour read
Maria PadianWrecked
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 25-27
Chapter 25 Summary: “Haley”
Before Chapter 25 begins, the italicized text describes a drunken Jenny dancing with the tall boy at the party.
Richard finds Haley to catch her up on what has happened; they sit on the steps outside of the chapel to discuss where they can go. Haley explains about moving Jenny out of their room, then she asks Richard “on a scale of one to still furious with me, where are you?” (214). He says he isn’t still mad, just “annoyed” and begins filling her in on his meeting with the investigator. Within minutes of his description, Haley gets upset about Richard talking about Carrie and his seemingly close friendship with Jordan. They both are frustrated about the situation they are in, where every sentence seems to get them closer to an “honor code violation” (216).
Richard begins to smooth things over by talking about their relationship and how it is important to fight and to “work it out” (217). They talk about strategies for Haley to be successful in her interview with Dean Hunt the next day. At the end of their talk, the two decide to have a “do-over” (218), shaking hands and pretending to meet all over again.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Richard”
In the passage before Chapter 26, Marliese and the girls, who have already left the party, realize that Jenny isn’t with them. They don’t have her phone number and quickly decide that “she’s fine” (22).
After his conversation with Haley, Richard heads home to Taylor House, where the residents are busy drinking. Before Richard can head upstairs, his friend Joe checks in with him, asking about how the interview with the investigator went. Richard redirects him, saying that he should “go to Jordan” (222). Richard reveals that he was fired from being Jordan’s advisor once he admitted his relationship with Haley to Jordan and Uncle Bruce. In that meeting, Uncle Bruce had asked Richard several questions about who knew what about Jordan’s behavior, uncovering the fact that Haley knows that Jordan said he had sex with Jenny.
Joe tries to get more information out of Richard, explaining that he is pretty sure he gave punch to Jenny, and he’s worried about whether he will get in trouble. Richard just repeats that he can’t talk about it and leaves Joe in the common area.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Haley”
The italicized section preceding Chapter 27 describes an intoxicated Jenny bumping into Tamra on the dance floor, who doesn’t even recognize her.
Before her meeting with the investigator, Haley has a rushed breakfast with Madison. Haley explains to Madison that Jenny’s parents and lawyer had woken her up trying to find Jenny, since “she never told them she’d changed rooms” (229). After walking the adults over to Out House, Haley rushed to the dining hall to meet Madison before the scheduled meeting. Over breakfast, Haley challenges Madison on her earlier behavior, suggesting that she could have actually checked on Jenny rather than leaving her alone.
In Dean Hunt’s office, Haley observes as the interrogation gets underway. Dean Hunt begins asking Jenny to tell him about what happened so that he can get his “facts straight” (233). When the dean asks Jenny about how much she had been drinking, she is hesitant, but when he asks her to use a rating scale to describe her “clarity of mind” (234), she finds it much easier and begins describing the events more easily.
Jenny begins to describe what happened, from getting ready with the other freshman girls to meeting up with Brandon Exley at Conundrum House and beginning to drink more. Jenny describes her clarity of mind as a “seven” (237) and explains that she then threw up in a recycling tub in a random room in the house. After that, Jenny left the house and felt refreshed; then she encountered a boy in the woods who talked to her, and they started walking together.
At this point in Jenny’s story, Dean Hunt asks for extra clarification, making sure he understands that she “walked into Taylor House with Jordan” (239). Jenny then explains that the two went inside, talked a little more, and then she asked to lie down. After falling asleep on the bed listening to Jordan talking, Jenny woke up with him “inside” her. Dean Hunt asks her to clarify specifically what this means, so she explains. She talks about telling Jordan “no!” and waiting for him to finish (242), at which point she left and somehow navigated back to the dorm.
Dean Hunt has some follow-up questions for Jenny about how she knew she was at Taylor House. He gently explains that he doesn’t think she is lying, but that some of the details don’t line up with reality: though Jenny remembers there being a picture of a dog named Oscar, Jordan doesn’t have pets, and though Jenny remembers going up stairs, Jordan’s room is on the first floor. Dean Hunt reassures Jenny that he doesn’t think she’s lying or “crazy” (246), but that he needs to figure out where she actually was when the rape happened.
Chapters 25-27 Analysis
Trust and honesty play an important role throughout Wrecked. Padian continually references these themes as central elements of the plot and character development. As the novel moves closer to a climax, the two protagonists, Richard and Haley, wrestle with their own ideas about what it means to be trustworthy or honest. The two discuss this at length with one another as the investigation increases in intensity. Haley emphasizes her distrust of Richard after he “lied […] about being Jordan’s advisor” (216), describing how important it was that Richard is someone Jordan could “trust” (215). This signifies an important learning moment for Richard, who had found himself wrapped up in Jordan’s case without wanting to be involved. Richard must figure out how to live his life in a way that allows him to always be honest and truthful; the situation with Jordan had put Richard’s capacity to do this into question.
Both Richard and Haley experience internal conflicts about how to be trustworthy. Though Haley expresses her firm beliefs about Richard’s need to be honest, she herself breaches Jenny’s trust early on in the novel by talking to both her mother and Richard about the case. This eventually will lead to greater conflict that Haley doesn’t predict when she makes her choices. Similarly, Richard struggles with how to navigate presenting the truth without completely breaching Jordan’s trust in him. After Richard’s interview with the dean, he suggests to Haley that if they both “tell him the same story […] he’ll know it’s the truth” (217).
Both protagonists are characterized as fairly naïve in terms of their understanding and ability to navigate honesty; they make immature decisions that place them in complicated situations, and they also struggle to decipher what the right thing to do is. This is shown through Richard’s difficulty acting as Jordan’s advisor, as well as his resulting struggle to tell the truth while being asked to lie. Similarly, Haley wrestles with her role as Jenny’s advisor and breaches confidence multiple times without anticipating any negative consequences. Through both of these characters, Padian illustrates the difficulties that young adults have when they are placed in situations where they need to act with integrity.
An important undercurrent of Wrecked is the ways that Padian portrays young adults using and abusing alcohol. Though the main characters deal with alcohol in their own ways, supporting characters also struggle with the impacts of drinking culture on campus. One critical example of this is Richard’s housemate, Joe, who is portrayed as kind and thoughtful. Joe is likely to have been the person who served Jenny a large portion of the alcohol that she drank on the night of her rape, and when he realizes this, he expresses how badly he feels that he “might have served the girl who then went off and got hurt.” (227). Joe’s guilt is an important part of the plot of Wrecked because it helps illustrate a common way that young people might be implicated in the injury or assault of their peers even if they did not intend to aid a perpetrator. Through Joe’s character, Padian shows readers how easily a seemingly harmless activity, like serving punch at a party, can help lead to dangerous situations for young adults on college campuses.
