54 pages • 1 hour read
Jarrett LernerA Work in Progress
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 280-359Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 280-301 Summary
Will wakes up briefly. He’s in his bed at home with a huge bump on the back of his head. His mom helps him drink water, and he goes back to sleep.
When Will wakes up again, he looks around at the familiar items in his room. His body feels “like one / big bruise” (288). He starts to remember everything that led up to his accident. He is suddenly afraid of himself but appreciates that he is alive.
He finds his parents in the kitchen. His mom holds him, and his dad kisses the side of his head. The feeling of his parents’ embrace makes him cry intensely. Afterward, they sit at the table. Will’s parents wait for him to speak. Eventually, he tells them everything he can about why he doesn’t “like being me” (297). He tells them all the events his diary has covered thus far.
After talking, he is nervous and relieved. He lets them ask any questions they want and answers them all.
Pages 302-329 Summary
Will is back upstairs when someone knocks on the front door. It is Markus, who has two skateboards. Will goes outside with him, and Markus gives him one of the skateboards.
Will protests, saying he has never skateboarded. Markus wants him to try. Though Will is afraid, he follows Markus’s directions about getting up on the skateboard. When Will is stable, Markus gives him a small push. He never wants the feeling of riding the skateboard to stop.
Markus asks Will to make a deal: He will teach Will to skate if Will shows him how to draw. He’s seen Will’s art, and it inspired him to want to improve his own. Will asks Markus why he came to Will’s house. Markus says he knew instinctively that he liked Will. He admits that Will made it hard to get to know him, but he persevered anyway.
Markus asks if he can finish telling the story the bell interrupted last week. He thinks of himself as a “work in progress” (318), a term he learned in an art class. They looked at unfinished self-portraits in one of his old classes and discussed whether the artists left them unfinished on purpose because people are always changing. Markus thinks it is freeing to realize that you’re always growing into someone new. This has inspired Markus to constantly try to be his authentic self, even if that changes. Just like no piece of art is universally loved, some people won’t like the authentic you, but others will.
Page 325 features a sketch of Will with the label “a work in progress.”
After Markus leaves, Will goes upstairs. He looks at his reflection. At first, he sees the “monster” he thinks everyone else sees. He tries to see what Markus sees and can’t, but he keeps trying.
Pages 330-359 Summary
Will’s parents make him two doctor’s appointments. The first is with his family doctor. The second is with Marci, a therapist. He begins telling her everything he told his parents, but she asks him what he likes. He tells her about his art and skateboarding. He agrees to see her weekly and looks forward to their sessions.
Three weeks later, Will gets the news that Markus is moving across the country. Markus agrees to send Will pictures of his drawings if Will sends him videos of him skateboarding.
On the next hot day, Will wears shorts and a t-shirt, leaving his sweatshirt and baggy jeans. It takes him 20 minutes to get the courage to leave the house. He purposely runs into Jules and says hi to her. He says he can tell she likes drawing, which he likes also. Jules’s friends snort, but Jules is smiling at him. Will says he might start a drawing club. Jules’s friends are derisive, but Jules is interested. He says he wanted to let her know about the club in case she’s interested. She says she might join.
Will knows he sucks at skateboarding, but he reminds himself how Markus says that all that matters is he keeps trying. He tries to remind himself about what his parents and Marci tell him: that nothing about food or his body is bad. He can’t control the bias of the people around him, but he can start to change how he sees himself. Will realizes that his body and when he gets hungry is not shameful.
Though he still has bad days, he also has okay and good days. He knows now that everyone has bad and good days. He compares this to finding balance on a skateboard, where the most important thing is to keep trying.
Pages 280-359 Analysis
These pages provide the falling action and resolution of the narrative as Will physically and emotionally recovers from his medical incident and starts trying to develop new ways of thinking about his identity as a fat person. The first few pages of this section have dark-ink scribbles all around the outer edges of the page. They are less prominent on every page, with more white space in the journal visible. This is a visual storytelling technique often used in film and television called a “fade to white.” A more common, related technique, “fade to black,” is where the action of the scene fades to a totally black screen. A “fade to white” is where a scene brightens to a white or almost all-white screen. In A Work in Progress, fade to white is used to show Will waking up and emerging from the dull confusion and disorientation brought on by his food restriction. Will comments on its outsized emotional effect, writing:
And the light—
the sun
coming through
the window
—it looked
impossible.
Unreal.
Like daylight
manufactured
for a movie (286-87).
After his body shuts down entirely due to food restriction, the world around Will looks new and remarkable. He is both “[s]cared / of [him]self” (240) and thankful for “being alive” (241). The fade to white and Will’s waking up scene also foreshadow him seeing himself in a metaphorical “new light” and finally letting people “see” him.
Will’s first step toward allowing himself to be seen is telling the full truth to his parents. Throughout the novel, until this moment, Will has been struggling with Body Image, Self-Critique, and Self-Acceptance to the point where he genuinely sees himself as a “monster” and as “less than” human. This is because he is fat and receives hurtful messages about Individual and Systemic Anti-Fat Bias from the people and world around him. This dysmorphia brought on several types of disordered eating take a great toll on his emotional and physical health. Will internalized all of this rather than speaking to a trusted adult. Though Will is not immediately healed of his negative self-image, talking openly to his parents does immediately bring “relief,” as if he had been “in a burning building” and “finally called / for help” (301). Though asking for help and letting people “see” your vulnerabilities can feel scary, Will realizes asking for help is the best way to overcome his struggles. Will’s parents, with all their life experiences and resources, are better positioned to get Will the help he needs.
While Will receives professional help from a medical doctor and a therapist, he is also finally receptive to reciprocating Markus’s friendship. This further develops the theme of Authenticity, Friendship, and What It Means to Be Seen. These pages cement Markus’s status as the mentor archetype, as Markus finishes telling a long story filled with personal anecdotes, metaphorical scenarios, and a life lesson, which is that everyone is always a work in progress. The fact that this moral of the story is also the novel’s title underscores its importance. Though Markus is moving away, the two resolve to remain friends. Additionally, Will has found a s professional advisor in his therapist, Marci, who can give him continued support.
As the novel concludes, the lesson that everyone is a “work in progress” helps Will realize that healing from receiving Individual and Systemic Anti-Fat Bias and internalizing its harmful messages is not instantaneous but a continued process. Like learning to use the skateboard Markus gave him, Will must practice every day to gain his balance in this new approach to life. Though Markus is gone at the end of the novel, he has played an integral role in helping Will learn the skills he needs to do this.
