April Charles Character Analysis

April is Monday’s older sister by three years. April and Claudia openly dislike each other—Claudia sees April as a liar, overly promiscuous, and an all-around example of what not to be. But when Monday goes missing, Claudia recognizes that April represents her only hope of figuring out where Monday went. So Claudia seeks April out in both the “Before” and the “After” timelines, asking for information. At first, April goes along with Mrs. Charles’s story: that Monday is with her father, Tip, and then that she’s staying with her aunt. But she gradually offers clues that suggest Monday isn’t coming back and even implies that Monday is actually dead. Over the course of their various run-ins, April says a number of things that challenge Claudia’s understanding of Monday. She insists, for instance, that Monday’s favorite color was actually purple—but Monday believed Claudia wouldn’t allow them to have the same favorite color, so Monday always lied and said it was pink. April also implies that Monday resented Claudia for holding her back from new experiences. Continuing to try to speak to April causes a number of social problems for Claudia, as April has a bad reputation for being very promiscuous. Wherever April goes, people whisper, taunt her, and stare. But the novel also implies that April engages in sex work to support her younger siblings. Not long after Monday and August’s funeral, April confides to Claudia that while Mrs. Charles forced her to put August in the freezer, she put Monday in the freezer of her own volition (Monday was unresponsive and possibly already dead at the time). She insists that she needed time to figure out how to save Tuesday and keep what was left of the family together. April deeply regrets her complicity. Over the next two years, April plays along with Claudia’s episodes of forgetting that Monday died. She does this in part because, though she was jealous of Claudia and Monday’s relationship, she also appreciates that Claudia was the only person who never gave up on finding Monday.