The Benefits of Being an Octopus

Connor offers to watch Hector for the half hour between when Kara’s shift begins and when Zoey will return from the after-school debate team meeting. Kara doesn’t think that the debate team or anything else will make a difference in their lives but allows Zoey to get a ride from Ms. Rochambeau so that Zoey can continue to pick up Bryce and Aurora. Zoey vows to prove her mother wrong.

During Zoey’s first day of debate club, she learns what it means to discredit one’s opponent. The class distinguishes between using logic to discredit an argument and using unfair personal attacks to discredit the opponent’s character. Zoey recognizes the second idea from the way that Lenny bullies Kara. During Ms. Rochambeau’s lesson, Zoey mimics the way that the other students take notes. The first debate club session passes without incident. Zoey still feels like she wants to camouflage herself and blend in with the furniture—until she reads a paper about wage inequality. The paper strikes a chord with her because she relates the ideas to her own life. If companies provided fair wages, families like hers wouldn’t have to rely on government services for food. Zoey raises her hand and is about to comment when an announcement comes over the loudspeaker: The school is in lockdown because of a shooting in the parking lot.

Zoey hides amid the library stacks with the other students and sees them passing notes between each other and brainstorming debate topic ideas. One note says, “This is super unfair” (84). For Zoey, the incident triggers a memory from when she was four years old and a man broke into the car where she and her mother were living. Kara fended the man off by stabbing him with her keys, but the event was traumatic and therefore stuck in Zoey’s memory. How Zoey experiences the lockdown event versus the way the other students do highlights the differences between their life experiences. The author doesn’t necessarily judge the students who are writing notes about trivial things; rather, the incident shows Zoey’s resilience in having accomplished the same thing that students with easier lives have—in this case, being invited to be on the debate team.

When Frank hears about the shooting, he launches into a diatribe about how “they” will demonize guns and “be knocking down our door trying to take ours away before you know it” (88). “They” is a catchall term for the world outside of the one in which he and Zoey’s family live: the political liberals, the middle class, the mainstream media, and the government.

Although the cause of the shooting remains a mystery, the fallout begins. At school the next day, rumors spread about who could have been involved. Suspicions falls on Silas, who wears a camo trucker hat and never talks—and whose father brought a shotgun to school premises. Like Zoey, Silas lives in the trailer park, which adds fuel to the assumptions about him. Zoey envisions the students picking up pitchforks and lighting torches on their way to hunt down the monster—Silas—that they believe responsible for the event.

Fuchsia turns up at Zoey’s locker, complaining about a severe asthma attack the night before, but Zoey is too preoccupied to show any real support. She dismisses Fuchsia as simply wanting attention.

After school, Ms. Rochambeau reveals the practice debate topic: gun ownership as an American right (92). They must prepare arguments for and against because they don’t know which side they’ll be called to defend. Right away, Lydia and Matt express disgust at the very idea of gun ownership, calling one side right and the other side “evil.” Their discussion makes Zoey anxious, and she ventures that most people who own guns don’t use them to kill people. Instead of hearing her out, Lydia looks at Zoey’s camo jacket and calls her “one of them” (94). Matt mutters that anyone who supports gun ownership is “either dumb as a rock or a straight-up monster” (95).