Educated: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Tony has been driving long-haul rigs to earn a living, but when his wife gets sick, he asks Shawn to run the rig for a week or two. Shawn agrees to the job—if he can bring Tara along. Tara is excited for an adventure out west. Shawn drives for long shifts—illegally doctoring his driving records to make it seem like he’s stopping to sleep—and every other day, he and Tara stop to shower and eat a real meal. Stopped in Albuquerque one evening, waiting in the parking lot of a Walmart for employees to unload the rig, Shawn teaches Tara how to fight—how to “incapacitate [someone] with minimal effort [and] control someone’s whole body with two fingers.” On the rest of the journey, Tara and Shawn play word games to pass the time, and Shawn gives Tara the nickname “Siddle Lister,” an inversion of “little sister.”

Back in Idaho, Tara auditions for a production of Carousel—and to her great surprise, Shawn auditions, too. At the first rehearsal, a girl named Sadie flirts with Shawn. When Tara asks Shawn if he likes Sadie, he says that Sadie has “fish eyes”—beautiful, but “dead stupid.” Sadie begins coming around Buck’s Peak to visit Shawn, but Shawn hardly ever speaks to her. At each rehearsal he purposefully messes with her in some new way—reprimanding her for talking to other boys or tormenting her by making her get him candy bars from the vending machine but demanding something different than what she comes back with. Shawn always apologizes to Sadie to keep her on the hook, often telling her she has “lovely eyes […] just like a fish.”

Sadie’s parents announce that they’re getting a divorce. When Mother hears the news, she says that Shawn has “always protected angels with broken wings.” Shawn, meanwhile, get a hold of Sadie’s high-school class schedule and memorizes it—he drives by school during the day when she’s moving between buildings to watch her. When he sees her walking with Charles one day, he starts ignoring her phone calls until Sadie becomes desperate and promises she won’t hang out with any other boys. Shawn begins inviting Sadie over to the house, but only to torment her by forcing her to bring him different drinks or foods that they don’t have in the house, so that she has to go into town and buy them for him.

One night, Shawn asks Tara to bring him a glass of water. As she approaches Shawn with the glass, she’s overcome by the desire to dump the whole thing on his head—when she does, he chases her down the hall, yelling at her to apologize. When she refuses, he grabs a fistful of her hair and drags her to the bathroom. He drops her head into the filthy toilet, just above the water, and holds her there. Tara still refuses to apologize. After a minute or so, Shawn lets her up—but then, using the technique he taught her back in Albuquerque, seizes her wrist and begins folding it backwards, incapacitating her. Tara at last apologizes. Shawn lets go of her and leaves the bathroom.

Tara locks herself inside the dirty bathroom, and stares, crying, at “the girl clutching her wrist.” Tara hates the girl in the mirror “for her weakness”—for letting herself be hurt. Tara tries to tell herself that she’s crying only from the pain—that Shawn’s actions haven’t affected her emotionally—and tells herself this narrative over and over again throughout the years, unaware of the “consequences” this encounter will have in the future.