57 pages • 1 hour read
Rebecca SteadLiar & Spy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Science Unit of Destiny”
Georges’s seventh-grade science class is beginning a unit on the sense of taste. Georges explains that this is known as “The Science Unit of Destiny.” At the end of the unit, the entire class will undergo a taste test to see if they can detect the taste of a certain chemical. For genetic reasons, only certain people are able to taste this chemical, and long-standing school lore amongst the students holds that the results of the test will somehow reveal the “personal fate” for at least one student: “true love or tragic death” (1). At the moment, however, the unit begins with Mr. Landau, the science teacher, showing the class a poster of the tongue inaccurately mapped by type of taste bud—sour, salty, sweet etc. Georges wishes that the map was more accurate because he finds the idea of everything having a “right place” to be comforting.
Chapter 2 Summary: “People, People”
In the last class period of the day on Friday, Georges gives his gym teacher a high-five to celebrate getting all the way to the end of the week. Georges says they do this every week because they both hate being there. On this day, the class is playing volleyball. Georges hopes that the dismissal bell will ring before it is his turn to serve, but that doesn’t happen. He serves, but the serve falls short and lands on his team’s side of the net. Some of the girls sarcastically “slow clap” at him.
Mrs. Warner, the gym coach, is trying to make the nickname ‘G’ “stick” to Georges. She tells Georges to have a happy weekend; when his spirits seem low, she asks him to sit down on the mat to talk. When she has to step away for a moment to help some other kids, Georges lies down, but this is a mistake. Another boy named Dallas puts his foot on Georges’s stomach. Dallas is upset that Georges’s bad serve cost them a tied game. Georges grabs Dallas’s ankle and lifts, causing Dallas to fall over.
Chapter 3 Summary: “A Boy Your Age”
On Saturday, Georges and his father move into the family’s new apartment. Georges stands in the lobby and realizes he hears a buzzing sound that seems to be coming from the intercom on the wall, the kind with a camera that allows residents to buzz visitors in through the locked building door. The buzzing stops, and Georges returns to brooding over Jason, “who had been his best friend before he’d gone to summer camp the year before and come back with popular, cool friends (9).
Another boy comes down the stairs with two dogs on leashes. Instead of going out the front door to walk the dogs, the boy opens a door beneath the stairs and appears to go down into the basement. Georges thinks that if his father was there, he wouldn’t have noticed how weird that was; instead, his father would only have been excited to see a boy Georges’s age living in the building.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Sir Ott”
The first thing that Georges’s father does is hang the family’s Georges Seurat print in the living room. The artwork consists entirely of tiny colored dots that create an image when the viewer steps back far enough. When Georges was younger, he misheard the name of the artist and used to think that his parents called the poster “the ‘Sir Ott’” (11). In Georges’s mind, Sir Ott is a polite, quiet man who watches a lot of TV and has always lived with them.
Together, Georges and his father unpack the family’s belongings. Once enough packing material has accrued, Georges’s father says he will show Georges where the trash goes in the basement, because taking out the garbage is Georges’s job. They take the bags of newspaper into the hall, but when the elevator comes, it is already occupied by a man holding two large suitcases. Georges thinks the building’s ornate features are shabby and old, but his father loves them. His father was fired from his job as an architect and now runs a small business helping homeowners to give their new houses the illusion of age. Although the family has lost their house, Georges’s mother, who values optimism and a positive worldview, says that being fired was a blessing in disguise for Georges’s dad, because he has always wanted to start his own business.
In the basement, Georges and his father find the garbage and recycling areas. They also find a door with a sign on it that says: “Spy Club Meeting—TODAY!” (13). Georges’s father uses a pencil attached to a string by the Superintendent’s office to write “WHAT TIME?” on the paper. Later, Georges finds that someone has written an answer on the spy club sign: “1:30?” (14). Georges writes “OK” and attends the meeting downstairs at 1:30. Georges’s father is delighted by this idea, but Georges complains that it will probably be a little kid.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Spy Club”
Georges takes a bag of crumpled newspaper as camouflage so that he can pretend not to be going to the meeting. He finds the door cracked open and sees a girl inside who looks to be about seven years old—just as Georges had feared. The girl quickly tells him that it’s not her club; she’s just there to get paid. She explains that she’s a scout and that someone named Safer pays her a dollar an hour, which she uses to buy candy. Safer turns out to be the 12-year-old boy that Georges previously saw walking two dogs. The girl demands her dollar, which Safer gives her. Georges asks if the girl has been sitting in the small room for an hour; she tells him she spent 15 minutes in the room and 45 on the “lobbycam” (19) earlier, watching Georges and his father go out for pizza. The boy, Safer, pushes the girl out of the room, calling her “Candy.” Georges confirms that their names are really “Safer” and “Candy,” and reflects that he’s finally met people who won’t make fun of his name.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Safer”
Safer offers Georges coffee from a flask, but Georges declines. Safer says they should “get started” and asks Georges how many garbage cans are lined up in the hallway. Georges asks if Candy is Safer’s sister; he confirms this, then repeats his question. Georges offers to count the garbage cans, but Safer says he wants to know whether Georges can remember how many there were. When Georges answers this and other detail-oriented questions incorrectly, Safer states that they “have a lot of work to do” (22).
Safer is very serious about his Spy Club and tells Georges that there is an evil man named Mr. X living in the building. According to safer, Mr. X wears black all the time, never speaks to anyone, and is always moving heavy suitcases in and out of the building. Georges mentions the man whom he saw on the elevator earlier, but Safer says it definitely was not Mr. X and tells Georges to pay better attention. Safer states that because Mr. X lives in the apartment right above Georges’s, it is important to have Georges’s help with the case. Safer says that Georges must not say anything about spy club to anyone, including his father, and suggests that Georges tell his dad that no one showed up to the meeting. Georges asks why Safer went into the basement with the dogs earlier. Safer tells him that there’s a door to the courtyard to the basement. He promises to stay in touch with Georges.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Fortunes”
Back upstairs, Georges tells his father that no one showed up to the meeting, but he immediately feels bad for lying. Georges’s father offers to take him to Yum Li’s, his favorite Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Georges feels guilty that the offer is meant as a consolation for a nonexistent disappointment, but he still agrees. Georges and his dad pass Candy and her mother in the lobby of the building. Candy’s lips are stained bright blue, and she ignores Georges completely, which reminds him that according to spy club rules, they’re supposed to pretend that they don’t know each other. At the restaurant, Georges and his father have a serious conversation. Georges’s father has had a hard day, coping with the reality that their old home is now someone else’s. He says that he spoke with Georges’s mother and that she sounded well. He also says that it’s been good having Georges to help him today.
They eat dinner and open their fortune cookies. As they leave the restaurant, they start walking in the wrong direction, and it takes a while before they realize that they’re going towards their old house out of sheer habit. When they do realize, they turn around and don’t talk about it. Back at the apartment, Georges’s dad offers to take Georges to the diner for breakfast before school the next day, and Georges agrees. His father leaves and takes a phone call from Lisa, Georges’s aunt on this mother’s side of the family. Georges’s father tells Lisa, “Everything is stable” (31). Meanwhile, Georges discovers an index card under his pillow that reads, “NEXT MEETING TOMORROW” (21). Georges reflects that Safer is even weirder than he thought.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
In these early chapters, the author establishes the ongoing theme of Coping with Change and Adversity by describing Georges’s many personal challenges both at home and at school, for just as he must adjust to a new, less-than-ideal living situation and cope with his mothers’ long absences, he must also navigate the socially treacherous situation of Dallas’s bullying behavior at school. Georges’s quieter moments reflect his many difficulties, for he is depicted as a quiet, reserved kid who struggles socially at school. Even Georges’s early reflections about the map of the human tongue suggest that he does not believe himself to be in full control of his life, for he thinks, “There’s something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there’s a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue turns out to be” (2). Just like the subject of his reflections, Georges’s life also reflects “total confusion” as the novel begins, with his mother sick, his home lost, and his school life tense and stressful. Likewise, moving to the new apartment forces Georges to leave his familiar and comforting home, but because Georges is a thoughtful person who cares about the feelings of others, even the adults in his life, he puts on a brave face for his father and doesn’t let his sadness show. This dynamic becomes particularly evident in Chapter 7, when Georges misses his old bed but chooses not to comment because he knows that his father already feels guilty over the necessity of leaving it behind.
In the early segments of the novel, Georges has yet to succeed at Finding Safety in Community, and many moments in these chapters establish the fact that that Georges has no friends at school. As a result, his loneliness and isolation contribute to his willingness to attend the Spy Club meetings despite Safer’s overt strangeness, setting the reader up to expect a range of adventures and shenanigans that Georges would not otherwise be disposed to pursue. Additionally, the aggression with which Dallas approaches Georges after the volleyball game further establishes that Georges must deal with a significant amount of bullying at school: anther isolating effect. The boy’s current lack of community is also emphasized in his reflections about his former best friend, Jason, who went away to summer camp and shifted to a different social group, forsaking his old friendships in favor of a new clique at the “cool table.” Georges struggles with the meaning behind this loss for the majority of the novel, as he constantly tries to reconcile the Jason he used to know with the person who is now willing to hang out with people who bully and torment Georges.
Ultimately, Georges’s loneliness and feelings of alienation from his peers make him willing to befriend Safer despite the other boy’s many odd characteristics.
While the author presents Safer and Candy as something of a mystery at this early stage, both characters are highly intelligent and independent people with unique interests. Georges’s openness to befriending the odd children shows his desperation for social interaction, and it is clear that even during their first meeting, Safer holds significant influence over Georges; although Georges hates lying, he accedes to Safer’s suggestion that he lie to his father about the Spy Club meeting. With this occurrence, the author implies that during this time of change and upheaval, Georges is particularly vulnerable to outside influences, and his need for a friend compels him to entertain Safer’s bizarre story about the mysterious Mr. X. It is noteworthy that, while Safer does become Georges’s friend, he does not attend school with Georges, which leaves the boy just as isolated in the school environment. Although the novel will eventually allow the protagonist to succeed at Finding Safety in Community by interacting and bonding Georges’s with other social outcasts at school, he is still alone and vulnerable at school in this early stage of the story.
The narrative also begins to hint at Georges’s mother’s absence in this section without describing the precise reason for it. She is not present in any of the first seven chapters, despite Georges describing his homelife as if his whole family is still together. In a continuation of this subtle narrative element, the novel will continue to obfuscate the nature of her time at home, for the author deliberately creates the impression that she is simply working many night shifts to make up for the salary decrease of Georges’s father. In reality, as the narrative will later reveal, Georges’s mother is being treated in the hospital for a serious infection. In these early chapters, however, Georges refuses to admit or acknowledge this grim reality to himself, pretending instead that she is simply working late every night. His mother’s illness is one more thing that Georges feels he has no control over, so it is easier for him to pretend that it’s not happening than it is for him to confront the possibility that she may die of her infection. In this aspect of the novel, Georges is an unreliable narrator, for he often describes events in such a way as to hide the truth behind his mother’s continued absence. His detachment and denial also function to develop the novel’s theme of Coping with Change and Adversity. Despite Georges’s obfuscation, early hints of his mother’s absence in these chapters can be seen in the phone call that Georges’s father takes from Lisa, Georges’s maternal aunt. During the phone call, Georges’s father uses the word “stable,” which implies that he is discussing a medical condition, not necessarily the family’s homelife.
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