The Honest Truth

“When I turned to go, I felt the bulge in my pocket. I took a shaky breath and pulled out the watch. It was an old-fashioned silver pocket watch with a round glass face. A present from my dead grandpa. I bit my lip, hard. I could feel it ticking in my hand. Tick, tick, tick. Time, running out. Here’s what I don’t get: why anybody would want to carry something around that reminds you that your life is running out.”

The pocket watch carries mixed emotions. Mark must have loved his grandfather if he carries the heirloom in his pocket, though he hates what it literally represents. Gemeinhart also juxtaposes the watch’s age (“old-fashioned”) with his grandfather and Mark himself, reflecting how time continues moving at a steady pace regardless of the implications for the rest of the world.

“I pulled a little notebook and pen from the outside pouch of my backpack. I flipped past my homework and doodles and opened to the first empty page, then thought for a minute. I felt around in my head, trying to find the words for the moment. An idea came, slow and shy. I nodded. I counted a couple of times on my fingers, my mouth moving silently with the words. Then I wrote them down.”

Gemeinhart uses “show don’t tell” storytelling methods to describe Mark’s actions without explicitly stating the act. The author trusts the reader to piece together Mark’s objective, and for clarity’s sake, Mark describes his hobby—writing haikus—to a younger character later in the story. This stylistic choice also hyper-focuses into Mark’s perspective; because Mark has no reason to explain the mechanics of haikus in this scene, Gemeinhart simply describes the process of pulling out a notebook and counting syllables.

“The police don’t usually come running when a kid’s only been missing a couple of hours. But when his mom told them about Mark, about his story, they started listening a little more seriously. When they heard what the doctors had said, they listened real seriously. When they found the note he had left, they were completely serious.”

Once again, Gemeinhart implies layers to Mark’s situation that aren’t yet stated in the text. The degree of the authorities’ concern is directly proportional to the severity of Mark’s condition, which progressively increases as Mark’s mom shares his story. These levels are also proportional to the degree of adult interference in Mark’s life (meaning parents, doctors, etc.).

“We were running through the sprinkler. All the world was green grass and blue sky and shoulders hot with sunshine. We didn’t have to have a reason to laugh. Little kids are so dumb. They don’t know anything yet. That’s the truth.”

These phrases introduce an abrupt tonal change to the scene as Mark relives his last truly happy memory. Previously, Mark described the crusty diner, the waitress with makeup caked over a black eye, and abandoned buildings and warehouses. Here, descriptions of “green grass and blue sky” and “sunshine” express a youthful optimism, which Mark almost immediately interrupts with his staple pessimistic commentary. Even when recalling happy memories, Mark is too war-torn by cancer to indulge in optimism.

“I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to feel her. There. There she was. I smiled, just a little, to myself. That’s the kind of friend she was. We were so together that we weren’t ever really apart.”

Even as Mark insists on complete independence, he draws strength and comfort from his best friend. Jessie is miles away, but he already has some conceptual understanding of how friendship can transcend distance and the choices that took him so far.

“I thought of hungry Willy at the bar, and me puking up dinner. Life sucks. That’s the truth. Here’s what I don’t get: Why does everyone always try to pretend that it doesn’t?”

Mark shows tremendous empathy toward others despite the severity of his situation. Though he’s angry for his own sake, Mark still recognizes someone else suffering and takes action by paying for the man’s dinner.

“She didn’t know it all yet. She hadn’t learned what Mark had learned, hadn’t discovered the secret that had made Mark pack his bag and disappear into darkness. If she had, the idea inside her would have kicked and stomped and grown into a rock-hard truth.”

Because of the narrative’s past tense, readers can assume that the novel’s events occur in the past. This is the only passage that clearly suggests the narrator’s hindsight perspective rather than continuing to tell the story in real time. Jessie’s knowledge here makes more sense after reading the novel’s resolution, which reveals how Mark asks Jessie to write his story, which essentially becomes this novel.

“I was still breathing. Still staring at where the stars should have been. Still feeling all my hurt, and all my sad. And my dog was licking the blood and tears from my face. [...] He was on a dark street in a strange city far from his home. And he was worried only about me. He was my hero.”

Mark’s word choice describes how much weight Beau’s friendship carries. He uses general (though simplistic) words such as “hurt” and “sad” to encompass the enormity of Mark’s baggage, whereas his more specific thoughts centralize around Beau’s understated acts of loyalty, which Mark celebrates as profound heroism.

“I didn’t want anyone to watch me die. I wanted to be alone.”

Mark’s insistence on being alone usually stems from a desire to prove his strength, but this moment doesn’t assert his independence. The end of this chapter reflects his shame at such an early failure and how he wants to end his life with privacy, away from others’ pity.

“But there in the bathroom, bloody and bruised, it didn’t just seem crazy. It seemed stupid. And impossible. Hopeless. I blinked my burning eyes and stuffed the postcard back in my pocket.”

This scene depicts how even intensely passionate people sometimes doubt their decisions and dreams. Mark’s determination carries him far, but the first moment of doubt doesn’t always indicate that giving up is the right course of action. Sometimes emotions ebb, and even the most determined people can question their own goals.

“Here’s what I don’t get: why giving up always sounds good until you do it.”

Though Mark (as he admits) doesn’t fully understand these emotions yet, his situation shows that the “right” answer isn’t always clear-cut. When he decides to give up, he believes he chooses to eliminate his pain, but giving up only relieves him of physical pains—bruises, hunger, etc. Right before finalizing his decision, Mark realizes that the cost of giving up—dashed dreams and accepting others’ pity—trumps the physical pain he feels.

“The headache was sharpening its teeth on the inside of my skull.”

Like many of the novel’s metaphors, the imagery attributed to Mark’s experience carries multiple implications. The headache’s act of “sharpening its teeth” suggests that Mark’s situation will only grow worse; his current pain is only the preparation for greater suffering to come. Gemeinhart also gives the headache malicious features—sharp teeth—to mirror the evil forces acting through Mark’s cancer.

“I could ask the hikers to give me some money. But I didn’t want to. I was doing this thing, all the way. I didn’t need anybody’s help. I didn’t want anybody’s help.”

Gemeinhart defines Mark’s voice largely through short sentences, often in rapid succession. He crafts structural similarities, particularly in the last four sentences, to emphasize the differences within each phrase. The near-repetition also reflects Mark’s insistence on doing things his own way.

“Its taillights glowed red in the growing dark. I watched them get smaller and smaller, and then disappear like two little wishes that wouldn’t come true.”

Gemeinhart uses a simile to reinforce the scene’s tone. He first introduces imagery that emphasizes the red and black color contrast, creating an ominous atmosphere. He then compares the disappearing red taillights to “two little wishes,” which reflect Mark’s fears that his most treasured dreams simply may never happen.

“I held onto [Beau] like I was drowning. His mismatched eyes looked somehow brighter in the darkness.”

Beau’s bright eyes, especially contrasted to the darkness, reflect the luminosity of Beau’s friendship amid Mark’s stormy life. When Mark’s situation becomes more dark and painful, his friends’ and family’s loyalty becomes proportionately more important.

“I was afraid of dying. [...] Here I am, on this trip, and I was afraid of dying.”

This quote shows Mark laughing ironically after nearly dying in the river’s rapids. Though Mark’s mentality sours at the inevitability of death, his instincts still protect him from harm when his life becomes endangered, even if Mark cannot explain why.

“I thought about my grandpa, who used to make me blush when he called me his hero. He’d given me that silver pocket watch and I’d carried it everywhere. I’d loved it—until things got worse and its ticking sounded more like dark footsteps coming up behind me. I loved the watch until I started hating time. And how it ran out.”

The pocket watch represents two opposite emotions to Mark; though he loves his grandfather, he remembers watching his grandfather run out of time. Now that Mark finds himself in the same position, he can’t help but despise—and fear—how time doesn’t slow or stop, and he resents running out of time so young.

“My chewing slowed down, down to the pace of the mournful country song from the speakers. Beau was beside me, and the mountain was getting ever closer, and I wanted everything to never go back and never go forward from there. I wanted all the clocks everywhere to stop.”

As shown through Mark’s love of photography and haikus, he desperately wants to preserve moments. However, these are only scant substitutes for his deepest desire, which he can’t find even on a journey up a mountain: to stop time altogether and experience moments unmarred by the fact that the moment will soon pass forever.

“But the docs say he has a shot.”

Wesley calls out Mark’s pessimism by telling readers what Mark has never suggested: Even though Mark’s cancer shouldn’t have returned, the prognosis does not necessarily mean certain death. Mark is weary of fighting cancer and vainly hoping it will disappear, so he doesn’t have high expectations for survival.

“I lifted my camera and snapped a shot of a green truck and white snow and black clouds and the friendly shape of a good man inside and red glowing taillights, driving away. Leaving me alone. […] I turned toward the mountain. It still wasn’t there. It wouldn’t show itself to me. Hiding in clouds, waiting for me to come to it.”

This passage’s imagery and word choice depict Mark leaving behind the known for the unknown. Descriptions of a “green truck,” “friendly shape,” and “glowing taillights” represent the comforts he chooses to leave behind, and the obscured mountain shows the uncertainty that lies ahead.

“No matter where I looked, there was nothing but white. But it was a darker kind of white than it had been before.”

Again, Gemeinhart contrasts light and dark to augment shifts in tone and Mark’s emotions. On the mountain, the contrast persists even in a snowstorm—among shades of white, the lightest color on the spectrum—reflecting Mark’s deteriorating circumstances and physical health.

“Dogs die. But not my dog. Not like that. Not my dog that exploded out from darkness to chase the wolves away. My dog that pulled me from a river. My dog that followed me up a mountain in a blizzard. My dog that tried to jump over death because I told him to. My dog.”

Mark experiences a role reversal: He doesn’t always understand why people feel compelled to help him just because he needs it, but now his dog—who he loves more than anything—could die. Mark feels that same compulsion to help, but he feels it arise from love rather than pity.

“Here’s what I get: everything. Taking my weak little steps through the snow down that mountain, I got it all. I thought of all my sickness, all my anger, all my fear. All that was just the darkness, just the storm. I got lost in it. But there’s always the other side of the storm. And the people who get you there. All the world’s a storm, I guess, and we all get lost sometimes. We look for mountains in the clouds to make it all seem like it’s worth it, like it means something. And sometimes we see them. And we keep going.”

The phrase “all the world’s a storm” brings to mind a famous metaphor from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women are merely players” (Shakespeare, William. Speech: “All the world’s a stage." Poetry Foundation). While Shakespeare concludes that people are performers on the world’s stage, Mark understands that life carries difficulties, and no one is completely exempt from trials. The support of family and friends gives him the strength to continue through the darkest storms.