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Chapter 20: Brendan Espinoza
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Restart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Memory, and Responsibility
Reputation vs. Reality
Masculinity
Social Hierarchies and Bullying
Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
As Aaron, Bear, and Chase wait for principal Dr. Fitzwallace outside his office, Chase demands to know why Aaron and Bear just pulled a prank that could get them kicked off the football team. Bear, grinning, points out that they didn’t smack Joel Weber. When Chase protests that that was an accident, Bear says that Dr. Fitzwallace won’t believe that—and the video club won’t confirm Chase’s story.
This conversation confirms what readers likely already suspected: Aaron and Bear engineered this situation to show Chase that none of his new friends will loyally believe his innocence in a situation where it looks like Chase is bullying Joel Weber again.
Themes
Chase accuses Aaron and Bear of “fram[ing]” him and of getting themselves in trouble just to spite him. Aaron says that they’re Chase’s friends and that they’re the ones who will protect him—he just has to follow their lead. When Dr. Fitzwallace ushers them into his office, he’s furious and disappointed. Before Chase can say anything, Aaron claims that an electrical short in the video equipment in the band room caused a fire as he and Bear were walking by. They ran in with fire extinguishers. Chase, hearing the noise, came to help. When Dr. Fitzwallace says the video club members describe the incident differently, Bear suggests they’re scared they’ll be punished for starting a fire.
Chase is correct that Aaron and Bear are “fram[ing]” him, but their subsequent lies to Dr. Fitzwallace make clear that they don’t want to get Chase (or themselves) in official trouble. They simply want to alienate Chase from his new video-club friends by showing that said friends will discount Chase’s personality changes and attempts to take responsibility at the first hint of new bullying. Because Aaron and Bear judge actions in terms of loyalty and disloyalty, not right and wrong, they assume that Chase will abandon his new friends if they are “disloyally”—yet justifiably—suspicious of him.
Themes
Dr. Fitzwallace asks Chase whether Aaron’s story is true. To Chase’s surprise, the principal’s expression suggests that he wants Chase to say yes. Chase deduces that seriously punishing students is a lot of work—and suspending or expelling Aaron, Bear, and Chase will ruin the school’s football season. Reluctantly, Chase says Aaron is telling the truth.
Dr. Fitzwallace isn’t fully invested in holding Chase, Aaron, and Bear to account for bullying, both because it’s a lot of effort and because their athletic success helps the school. This disturbing fact illustrates how adult authorities can be complicit in athletes’ bullying of other students. Chase’s decision to back up Aaron’s lie is understandable—he doesn’t want to be punished for bullying Joel when he genuinely wasn’t bullying Joel—but also binds him more tightly to Aaron and Bear, who have just cruelly manipulated him and separated him from his new friends.
Themes
Dr. Fitzwallace gives Chase, Aaron, and Bear a lecture about calling for adult help, but no punishment. As the boys wait for their parents to come get them, Bear gloats over Aaron’s successful lies, and Aaron celebrates how Chase “came through.” Chase, miserable, reflects that lying and getting away with bullying must have been a pattern in his pre-amnesia life. After Aaron and Bear’s parents have taken them away, Frank shows up, grinning, and praises Chase. When Chase tells him the situation “wasn’t great,” Frank retorts that avoiding punishment is “pretty great.” Truthfully, Chase isn’t sorry to have avoided serious punishment, but he hates how it happened.
When Aaron tells Chase that he “came through,” it suggests that Aaron sees Chase’s lie as a demonstration of renewed loyalty to him and Bear, not the attempt to avoid undeserved punishment that it actually was. Frank tells Chase that avoiding punishment is “pretty great” even after Chase tries to tell him that the situation itself was bad—an irresponsible attitude for a father to take, one hinting that Frank’s macho immaturity actively encouraged Chase’s poor pre-accident behavior.
Themes
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The next morning, the video-club faculty advisor Ms. DeLeo finds Chase and tells him he’s no longer in video club. When he asks whether Brendan explained that he’s “innocent,” she tells him that that’s not exactly how Brendan described it—and that supporting Aaron and Bear’s lies has made him look bad. Chase realizes that by lying, he’s convinced the club that he’s up to his old, nasty tricks. He promises Ms. DeLeo, shakily, that he’ll avoid the club. Angry at Aaron and Bear, he avoids them all day—easier that day, because Frank is picking him up early for his appointment with the new doctor. Brendan is avoiding Chase in turn, and Shoshanna, when she sees him, gives him a death glare.
Brendan did believe that Chase might be “innocent,” though he wasn’t sure. Mrs. DeLeo’s account suggests either that Brendan changed his mind after Chase lied or that the other video-club kids refused to listen to Brendan’s doubts—or perhaps both, as Brendan seems unwilling to interact with Chase, and Shoshanna is actively furious with him. In other words, Aaron and Bear’s plan worked to prove the video-club kids’ “disloyalty” worked—though it isn’t clear whether it would have worked if Chase hadn’t backslid in his personal growth and lied to avoid punishment, suggesting both that Aaron and Bear’s concept of “loyalty” is deeply flawed and that Chase shouldn’t have lied to protect himself, even though he didn’t deserve to be punished.
Themes
The new doctor clears Chase to play football—though, privately, Chase thinks he would “clear a dead man.” As Frank drives Chase back, he celebrates Chase returning to the team. Chase reminds him that, according to the rules, he has to practice for three weeks before playing a game. Frank is pumped anyway. Chase isn’t—he doesn’t want to be the person he was when he was a football star—but he feels like he has to return to the team because he’s lost the video club. Frank tries to tell Chase that the video club doesn’t matter; he even praises the “statement” Chase made with Joel. Chase doesn’t bother to explain that that’s not what he was doing.
Chase wants both a stable identity and friends. He thought he had found that with video club—but now that Aaron and Bear have taken that away from him, he feels that he has to “settle” for being the football team’s star, even though he actively dislikes the person that identity encouraged him to be. Frank is disturbingly unhelpful: he praises the “statement” that Chase made with Joel—which is to say, he praises his son for hitting a smaller boy in the face with a fire extinguisher, apparently assuming that his son did it on purpose. This irresponsible parenting hints yet again that Frank’s obsession with Chase’s athletic prowess and macho identity ultimately led him to encourage pre-accident Chase’s reckless and even violent behavior, including his bullying.
Themes
Frank drops Chase off at home, reminding him to go to football practice later that afternoon. Chase agrees listlessly. Back in his bedroom, he looks out his window onto the roof and feels as if he can remember sitting there. Impulsively, he climbs out onto the roof. From there, he can see the school, the football field, the assisted living facility, and the park where he and Brendan filmed Leaf Man. This last memory chokes him up: he preferred his new video-club identity to his old one, but it’s been taken from him.
Chase can’t really remember being a football player. Nevertheless, his negative moral judgment on the person he was as a football star leads him to believe that he would have preferred being a video-club kid. This belief shows Chase’s personal growth: he prefers being a low-status video “geek” to being a high-status star athlete and a bully.
Themes
