Flipped

“We’d be in junior high—a big school—in different classes. It would be a world with too many people to worry about ever seeing Juli Baker again. It was finally, finally going to be over.”

These sentences serve as the chapter cap for Chapter 1 and establish precisely what Bryce hopes for once junior high begins: After five long school years of dealing with Juli, he believes he will be free of her influence in a bigger building with mixed classes and intricate scheduling. Bryce’s tone is hopeful, but the emphasis placed on his words as the last ones of his opening narrative foreshadows the opposite of what he wants.

“I know you, sweetheart. Somehow that ball will wind up in their yard and you’ll just have to go retrieve it.”

In her opening narrative, Juli recalls her excitement as an almost-second grader the day Bryce and his family moved across the street. Her mother made her stay inside for the first hour, despite Juli’s repeated requests to meet the new boy her age. Here, her mother’s dialogue indirectly characterizes young Juli as precocious and slightly ornery when something she really wants is on the line.

“The facts spoke for themselves. Bryce didn’t go anywhere near her for the rest of the year.”

Juli’s line of interior monologue highlights the dramatic irony of the early chapters. Readers know the truth—that Bryce asked Shelly Stalls out only to rid himself of pesky Juli—but Juli does not know or suspect his real intentions. The line highlights the situational irony as well: Bryce wanted Juli to lose romantic interest in him considering he now had a girlfriend (Shelly), but the way Juli sees it, her instinct to save Bryce from Shelly is proven correct when he and Shelly do not continue dating.

“A girl like that doesn’t live next door to everyone, you know.”

Granddad Duncan tries to tell Bryce that he is missing a good opportunity for a relationship with Juli. He questions Bryce’s standoffishness toward Juli after reading about her attempt to save the sycamore tree, but Bryce can only focus on Juli’s pushiness and “stalking” habits. Granddad’s line of dialogue here sums up the point of his overall message to Bryce, though it is ignored; it also foreshadows Granddad’s close relationship with Juli and inherent respect for her “iron backbone.”

“That’s when the fear of being up so high began to lift, and in its place came the most amazing feeling that I was flying. Just soaring above the earth, sailing among the clouds.”

Juli has this reaction when she climbs the sycamore tree to fetch Bryce’s kite for him. The overwhelming view from the high reaches of the tree astounds her, and she feels as if she has left the earth’s surface. Her sense of smell is piqued as well. This change in her emotions and sensory experiences and subsequent shifts in thinking of the tree as magical support the theme of “Change as a Result of New Perspective.”

“I never want you to convince yourself of that. You and I both know it isn’t true.”

Juli is heartbroken by the destruction of her sycamore tree, but she attempts to tell her father she will get over it; he responds with this line of dialogue. He wants Juli always to remember how much the tree mattered to her. To help her, he paints the tree’s image and gives it to her. The line indirectly characterizes Juli’s father as a caring and emotional parent with empathy and respect for the coming-of-age process.

“Hiya, Bryce! Remember Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter? Eunice and Florence?”

Juli’s decision to bring free eggs to Bryce and the Loskis is instrumental to the flux in their relationship. Bryce reacts internally with bitterness and discomfort, as the eggs remind him not only of Juli’s fifth-grade exuberance for her hatchlings and resultant science fair success but also what he suspects is her continued infatuation with him. Externally, he cannot tell her the truth for two years, impacting the story of their relationship.

“But from now on I expect you to look that little tiger square in the eye, you hear me?”

Bryce’s father begins to demonstrate a coarse and unsympathetic attitude over the eggs debacle; he wants Bryce to face Juli and stop behaving as if he is afraid of her. Bryce’s individual conflict grows due to this comment, as he now must hide the truth from both Juli and his father regarding the eggs.

“So I got back to work. I cleared away the eggs I’d neglected and got back into my routine of collecting and cleaning. And one morning when I had enough, I made the rounds.”

Juli’s line of interior monologue demonstrates strength and resilience, and her tone suggests a healthy dose of increased maturity after a lengthy melancholy from losing both her dog and her sycamore tree. Ironically, Bryce’s inability to do the mature and responsible thing (tell the truth about the eggs) will threaten her reinvigorated spirit. The line also foreshadows how her spirit will bounce back in the face of learning Bryce’s true feelings about her eggs, chickens, home, and yard.

“In a matter of seconds he’d crack open the truth, and I’d be as good as fried.”

Bryce is witty and clever and often returns to the egg motif in his narrative as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the trouble in which he finds himself by throwing away Juli’s eggs. Here, he uses a metaphor for cooking eggs to explain the perilous moment when Garrett discovers the newspaper with Juli’s picture in Bryce’s backpack.

“Some of us get dipped in satin, some in gloss…. […] But every once in a while you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”

Bryce’s grandfather uses an extended metaphor to teach Bryce that Juli is special and worthy of his respect and attention. Granddad is indirectly referring to the special qualities of his wife, as Juli reminds him of Renee. This line of figurative language is full of imagery as well.

“He may be acting like a coward now, but I do hold out hope for the boy.”

Chet says this line of dialogue distractedly to Juli about Bryce after catching Bryce watching their yardwork but resisting any communication or offers to help. Chet shows that he is a frustrated Mentor character archetype with this line, also commenting on an earlier visit to Juli that Bryce “still has a ways to go” (109). Chet is eager to help Juli because he sees an “iron backbone” and spirit in her that reminds him of his wife Renee, but it is also likely that he began helping Juli—in full view of Bryce’s room—to teach Bryce by example about neighborliness, hard work, friendship, and altruism.

“What that family must think of us.”

In an attempt to fend off certain disaster and gain an Ally, Bryce admits to his mother his error in judgment with Juli’s eggs and his follow-up comments about her yard. Here, Mrs. Loski focuses on how Bryce told Juli that the Loskis fear salmonella from Juli’s dirty chickens; she worries that the Bakers think of her and her family as arrogant. The line and surrounding conversation support the theme topic of perspective and the theme of “Seeing Others for Who They Really Are.”

“I followed them into the room and saw that the walls were covered in a collage of puzzles. They’d been glued directly to the walls and even up on the ceiling! It was cozy and comfortable, and interesting. I felt as though I’d entered a quilted cave.”

Juli describes the completed jigsaw puzzles in Uncle David’s room at Greenhaven. The lines contain effective imagery and a strong metaphor with the use of “quilted cave.” The description evokes a sense of safety and security, which is exactly how Juli’s father later describes David’s life at Greenhaven; leaving the comfort of his home by car one time scared David so much that he broke a window. His room and puzzles, by contrast, provide David with the balance of stimulation and shelter he needs.

“I guess I didn’t see until recently how little I’ve actually provided. […] [Mr. Loski’s] around more, he provides more, and he’s probably a lot more fun.”

Mr. Baker has a wake-up call with Juli’s concerns and Bryce’s comments about their front yard, followed by Mrs. Baker’s pointed statements about their real life versus the hopes and dreams they had upon moving into the rented house. However, the great irony in his words here is that Bryce is currently realizing that his father, Mr. Loski, is not a strong man in the way Bryce always thought; Mr. Loski is unkind, biased, judgmental, and crude. By the end of the story, both Juli and Bryce see which man actually provides more.

“This is not the way you want to feel about your father.”

Bryce tries to convey his usual humor tinged with wryness and subtle sarcasm in this line, but he cannot hide the seriousness of the given circumstances. Bryce stands in his entryway, watching his father fake a cheerful greeting and conversation with Mr. Baker. The new perspective Bryce has of his father, based on Mr. Loski’s candid commentary and crude criticisms of Mr. Baker, alters Bryce’s opinions of his dad and contributes to the theme of “Change as a Result of New Perspective.”

“But the fact that it had ever been made me feel even more like a stranger in a strange land.”

The dinner party is a night of revelations for Bryce; for example, here, he refers to his father’s role as a performer in a country band before marriage and children. Mr. Loski states that person is not who he is any longer, and Bryce focuses on the detached feeling he experiences thinking about his father ever being in a band. The line “stranger in a strange land” is an allusion to a Bible verse (Exodus 2:22); author Robert A. Heinlein also used the phrase to title his 1961 science fiction classic.

“So I stayed put. And even though the earth quit quaking around eleven o’clock, there were tremors out there. I could feel them.”

After the enormity of the fighting in his household that followed the departure of the Bakers on dinner party night, Bryce lies low in his room. His earthquake metaphor strongly juxtaposes his earlier comparisons for lying low (diving down to calm waters to wait out the rough tides above). The water metaphor connotes a place of quiet serenity despite nearby conflict, but Bryce’s tremors metaphor suggests a lasting ripple effect no matter where he hides.

“One dinner couldn’t change anyone’s life. I just had to get through it.”

Juli makes it clear through her interior monologue that she would love to refuse to attend the dinner party at the Loskis, but she realizes the trouble and hassle this would bring to her parents; she tells herself, consequently, that she will go, and that it will simply be a matter of bearing it. While Juli demonstrates maturity and restraint with this line, it is also deeply ironic. Her perspective of the Loskis changes when she finally observes them all together, and she comes to some conclusions that are, in fact, life-changing. Through the author’s employment of dramatic irony, the reader learns that for Bryce, the dinner party is even more consequential In changing his views on his father, other family members, and the Bakers.

“Looking across the table at him, all I got was a strange, detached, neutral feeling. No fireworks, no leftover anger or resurging flutters.”

At this moment at the dinner party, Juli’s opinion of Bryce is entirely opposite of the way she felt in Chapter One; she has become “unflipped” and holds not even a residual bit of infatuation for Bryce. Her neutrality toward him and her recognition of it lead her to apologize after dinner, and she goes home with a light spirit, happily looking forward to the coming days as Bryce-free. Ironically, Juli does not know that Bryce’s newfound preoccupation with her only grows.

“Guess who made this year’s top twenty.”

Bryce refers here in his interior monologue to learning that he has made the list of “basket boys” for this year’s Booster Club auction at his school. The auction is the plot event that drives the story toward its conclusion; Bryce sees Juli with another boy (for whom, ironically, she has no romantic feelings), and the jealousy he feels compels him to action. Because of the auction, he witnesses the petty arguments and trivialities of two other girls, leading Bryce to realize the truth of his grandfather’s assessment of Juli as special.

“But in my heart I knew the old Bryce was toast. There was no going back.”

Bryce walks home after school on the day of the auction, briefly wishing he could go back in time and redirect his humbling actions at the picnic lunch. Here, though, he boldly affirms to himself in an interior monologue that he is changed, unexpectedly and permanently—just as his grandfather foreshadows when he tells Bryce, “And, son, from here on out, you’ll never be the same again” (187).

“Maybe he’s had some revelations lately, too. […] Maybe there’s more to Bryce Loski than you know.”

Like many excellent Mentors, Mrs. Baker offers these suggestions to Juli, then leaves Juli to draw her own conclusions. The reader understands the ironic understatement in her advice to her daughter, being privy to Bryce’s realizations and discoveries with consequent character trait changes along the way of his coming-of-age. Mrs. Baker paves the way here for Juli’s acceptance that Bryce might have matured and changed as she has in the last year.