47 pages • 1 hour read
Jake BurtGreetings From Witness Protection!
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2017A 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 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Kind of Home”
Thirteen-year-old Nicolette (Nicki) Demere has been part of the foster care system for years without ever finding a permanent home: “Sticking—that’s what we call it. The lucky kids stick to their foster families. I seem to be covered in nail polish remover or something. I’ve been with five—count ‘em, five—families in five years since Grammy died” (4).
Before that point, Nicki’s mother abandoned the family, and Nicki’s father has been in prison for years. She inherited her parents’ troubled past, and her grandmother taught her to be a pickpocket. Nicki’s talent for petty thievery has earned her a juvenile record. In addition, she has abandonment issues but has made some friends while in the Foster Center awaiting a new placement. One morning, Nicki is summoned to the director’s office and assumes that a new family may be looking for a foster child.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Careful What You Wish For”
Nicki is led to the Transition Room, where she meets a giant hulk of a man and a humorless woman. As she introduces herself, Nicki takes the opportunity to pick the man’s pocket. The pair don’t appear to be prospective parents. They’re both dressed in dark uniforms and are carrying tasers. The woman soon begins firing questions at Nicki about her name, height, age, and weight. As the conversation becomes more confrontational, Nicki demands some information from her interrogators.
She already knows volumes about the man because of the items she lifted from his pockets. He’s Eddie Harkness, and his partner’s name is Janice. They’re US marshals. Both are shocked and slightly impressed by Nicki’s skill as a pickpocket. Nicki learns that her father was released from prison two years earlier but never bothered to seek her out. The marshals explain that they’re looking for someone with Nicki’s street smarts and grit to become part of the Witness Protection Program, also known as the Witness Security Program (WITSEC).
Chapter 3 Summary: “An Offer I Can’t Refuse”
The marshals show Nicki a family photo of a husband, wife, and their son. She’s shocked to note that she’s the spitting image of the wife. Eddie explains that this family is part of the WITSEC program. The wife’s name is Elena Sicurezza, and she testified against a powerful mob family that wants to kill her. Because of the sophisticated means of tracking people via the internet, something more than a new identity is required. To throw pursuers off Elena’s trail, the government is inventing an entirely new identity for the Sicurezza family, and it includes a new daughter. If Nicki agrees to be the new daughter, her criminal record will be erased, and her former identity will disappear. More importantly, the Sicurezza family will be obligated to keep her and not return her to the system. Eddie explains, “This is a big decision, because once your records are the property of the U.S. marshals, we’re going to destroy them. Nicki Demere will no longer exist” (28-29). Nicki takes very little time to agree to these terms.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Smelling as Sweet”
In less than an hour, Nicki is whisked out of the Center and isn’t even allowed to say goodbye to her few friends. The marshals take her to the airport, where they’ll fly to a training center in Georgia for Nicki’s orientation. She’s asked what name she’d like. The new family’s last name will be Trevor. Nicki settles on Charlotte Ashlynn for her personal name because she likes the initials “CAT.” At the airport, she meets two other youngsters from the foster system who had similarly troubled backgrounds and have enlisted in the WITSEC program.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Backstories”
In Glyncoe, Georgia, Nicki and her new companions spend two weeks getting oriented: “Erin, A.J., and I, it turns out, are a fourth of the kids in Project Family [...] We train together, we eat together, we relax together, and we speculate together” (48-49). At the end of this time, Nicki is again separated from her new friends.
She receives a folder on the Trevor family and is expected to learn all the facts related to their case before meeting them. Among the items in the folder, Nicki finds the picture of a man who was executed by the mob for testifying against them. She realizes that Elena Sicurezza is in serious danger. In addition, she reads through court testimony. Apparently, Elena is a member of the Cercatore crime family and was an attorney who assisted in drafting contracts for their protection racket: “I blink several times, then swallow slowly. The Cercatores…no wonder the Sicurezzas need WITSEC! Everyone has heard of the Cercatores, at least enough to know you don’t mess with them” (55).
Next, Nicki reads about the new identities that have been assigned to the family. They’ve just relocated from Ohio to North Carolina. They’ll assume the cover identity of Jonathan, Harriet, Jackson, and Charlotte Trevor, and their old lives will completely disappear. Agent Janice advises Nicki that the key to the family’s survival will be an air of normalcy. They must do nothing to attract attention, either positive or negative. Nicki is expected to maintain average grades and blend in. She’s not allowed a social media presence but will be given a way to contact the US marshals if she needs help. Janice Stricker will be her principal contact. Nicki sums up Janice’s list of rules: “Rule one: No crimes. Rule two: B-minus. Rule three: No Facebook. Rule four: No personality. Rule five: Happy family” (62).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Tea with the Trevors”
The following morning, Nicki, now expected to go by Charlotte, meets her new family. They’ve flown to Georgia to get acquainted. Charlotte immediately likes Elena (now Harriet) and marvels at the resemblance between them. Jonathan seems kind, but Jackson is an annoying 12-year-old who seems resentful that his life has been disrupted and that he’s being saddled with an older sister.
A psychiatrist named Dr. Coustoff facilitates their orientation. She says, “As we speak, the U.S. marshals are hard at work creating photo albums, schoolwork, old family vacation itineraries—everything necessary to fill in your backstory” (73). The new family will be drilled for the rest of the week on their backstories, and they’ll attempt to function as a unit. Jackson acts up, which triggers a brief episode of Charlotte’s compulsion to steal, and she snatches the psychiatrist’s pen. The group separates briefly to give everyone a chance to calm down.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Places, Everybody, Places.”
The same afternoon, the family reconvenes to try some role-playing exercises devised by Coustoff. The scripted dialogue is a laughable attempt to mimic teenage speech, and both Charlotte and Jackson object to it. Charlotte says, “Trying to write the way kids talk is kind of impossible. Anything you put in here will be out-of-date before people even get a chance to read it; we evolve faster than you can write” (82). To Nicki’s surprise, Harriet agrees with her and insists that the family find a way to communicate naturally with each other. This reaction makes Nicki feel that she doesn’t want to let Harriet down.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
The book’s initial segment introduces Nicki’s world as a child caught in the foster care system and provides the chance to understand the unstable and confusing atmosphere that she experiences in her everyday life. Implicit in these early descriptions of the foster center is Nicki’s desire to find a real home. Without a trace of self-pity, she describes the number of foster families with which she has been placed and the number of friends at the center that she has lost: “Sticking—that’s what we call it. The lucky kids stick to their foster families. I seem to be covered in nail polish remover or something. I’ve been with five—count ‘em, five—families in five years since Grammy died” (4).
Her life before foster care was equally unstable. Her abandonment by her mother, her father’s incarceration, and care by an elderly grandmother who taught her to steal hardly gave Nicki a firm foundation. In the context of these disturbing revelations, Nicki’s stress-induced urge to steal is understandable. Her fear of anyone touching her hands or even wearing gloves likewise seems reasonable since her hands are the tools of her trade, and she can’t stand the notion of their being captured. The idea may be a metaphor for her fear of imprisonment, which was her father’s fate. These facts about Nicki’s past introduce the theme of The True Meaning of Home.
After establishing Nicki’s backstory and motivation, the story rapidly shifts to the opposite of Nicki’s authentic desire. When the US marshals arrive, they present her with the opportunity to join a fake family. Ironically, Nicki’s unstable early life has attracted their notice. Eddie tells her, “We’re looking for a strong girl, one with your kind of grit, smarts, and skills. We’re looking for a girl who has dealt with all that stuff and come through still spitting fire and throwing jabs” (22).
What Eddie fails to mention is that a girl who has endured such dire conditions might also be desperate to escape them. This makes Nicki a candidate ripe for exploitation by WITSEC. After all, she’ll be risking her life to protect a group of strangers. Nevertheless, the proposition appeals to her, especially once she learns that her father was freed two years earlier but never came to find her. This betrayal by a biological relative introduces the theme of False Families and the Lack of Authenticity. Her father isn’t masquerading under a fake persona like the Trevors under WITSEC, but he has proven false and uncaring toward his daughter, leaving her without an authentic family.
Nicki’s experience of betrayal by her own flesh and blood foreshadows a parallel that the novel soon reveals about Harriet’s relationship with the Cercatores. After Harriet (formerly Elena) testifies against her family, they put out a contract on her life. This sets up an initial subliminal bond between Harriet and Nicki (now known as Charlotte). Their physical resemblance to one another is another connection between them. Charlotte’s first contact with the Trevors startles her because she walks into the situation expecting to exploit it to secure her own survival. She doesn’t expect to identify with or like the family to which she’s assigned. Her first sight of Harriet immediately changes that assumption.
Elena, or Harriet, I suppose, gasps. She presses a hand above her heart and stares at me. I can actually see tears welling in her eyes. They’re just like mine, only darker, more strained than they were in the photo, like she’s seen a hurricane or two in her time. It makes my skin prickle and my heart race (70).
Although she may not recognize it, Charlotte has identified with Harriet, and a kinship bond is forming between them. Harriet will soon refer to Charlotte as her daughter. Even though this is a bit of playacting, it foreshadows the relationship they build over the course of the novel that eventually results in a real home for Charlotte.
