Liar & Spy

“Mom’s always telling me to smile and hoping I’ll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying. But I know she’s extra-sensitive about me ever since she and Dad made their big announcement that we had to sell our house. She even recorded a bunch of America’s Funniest Home Videos for me to watch: my smile therapy.”

Georges’s mother’s emphasis on a positive outlook is seen here, along with her emphasis on the big picture in life. Georges knows that his parents are worried about how he is handling all the changes in their lives, and he is sensitive to their feelings as well. This quote also introduces America’s Funniest Home Videos, a comforting resource that Georges will continue to turn to as things in his life grow more difficult.

“I want to tell him what I know, which is that the fate of the world doesn’t hang on whether a bunch of seventh graders win a game of volleyball in some really old school in Brooklyn that smells like a hundred years of lunch.”

Georges’s perspective here reflects his ability to see what his mother calls “the big picture”—the things that really matter. It shows his maturity, but it also reveals his numbness and the difficulty he has in caring about “the little things,” the day-to-day experiences that make up his life.

“What I’m really doing is looking down at that wedge of wood and thinking about how I used to make these super-long car ramps with Jason, and how Jason dresses like a skateboarder now, which he isn’t, and how whenever Carter Dixon or Dallas Llewellyn calls me Gorgeous, Jason just stands there.”

Jason was Georges’s only friend until he abandoned Georges for the popular kids at the beginning of the school year. Georges struggles with understanding how his friend could have changed so much in such a short period of time. Losing his friend was painful, but Jason’s complicity in Dallas and Carter’s bullying leaves Georges even more hurt and confused.

“I smile. I have a strong feeling that I’ve just met two kids who will never make fun of my name.”

Georges, an eccentric child with no friends at school, is relieved to meet kids close to his age who are unlikely to judge him; as Georges notes in an earlier chapter, the unusual spelling of his name has made him a target for bullying and harassment. With Safer and Candy, Georges quickly feels a sense of kinship that brings him comfort.

“I don’t want to think about Dad needing me. I wish I had just told him something about school instead of asking him to tell me stuff instead. I could have told him about volleyball, maybe. About the slow clap, and Dallas’s foot in my stomach. But it’s too late now because it feels like all that would only make him feel worse.”

Despite his difficulties at school, Georges is too concerned about his father’s feelings to confess that he is struggling. This shows what a thoughtful and empathetic person he is; his wish that he’d confessed instead of turning the check-in back on his father also illustrates how much pressure Georges puts on himself to act like everything is fine even when he’s not feeling his best.

“Dallas Llewellyn passes me on the way to his seat, saying, ‘You’re it, Gorgeous,’ and flicking the top of my ear with his finger. I ignore him. Dallas is always on the lookout for other people’s weak spots so that he knows exactly where to poke them. And if you don’t have a weak spot, he’ll invent one and poke you anyway.”

This type of small-scale harassment characterizes the bullying that Georges often faces at school. The offenses are minor, and in his mind, they seem unworthy of escalating the affair and asking an adult to intervene. Instead, Georges ignores Dallas in the hopes of concealing his “weak spots” from the bully.

“‘Does this ever get boring?’ I ask.

He looks like he can’t believe me. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t get boring. Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.’”

Safer’s claim about boredom helps to support the idea that perception can influence reality, for people who can control their mind can also control the way they see the world. By extension, they can also choose how they feel about events beyond their control.

“I’m wondering how many people in the world would have understood right away what I meant about the word bounce, the way Safer just did.”

As Georges opens himself to friendships with Safer, Candy, and Bob, he finds that it’s possible to be himself and still be accepted by other people. Safer’s easy acceptance of Georges’s odd moment shows Georges that it’s possible to find people who appreciate his authentic self.

“And then I think of all those thousands of dots Seurat used to paint the picture. I think about how if you stand back from the painting, you can see the people, the green grass and that cute monkey on a leash, but if you get closer, the monkey kind of dissolves right in front of your eyes. Like Mom says, life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it’s amazing, but if you’re standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it’s really hard to tell.”

Seurat’s technique of pointillism is used as a symbol throughout the book as a means for Georges to express the ways he compartmentalizing unpleasant experiences and distances himself from the bullying and the pain that he feels. Here, Georges explains this perspective on the world, equating “a bunch of black dots” with negative experiences and explicitly talking about engaging with those experiences in terms of distance. At this point in the novel, he believes that the further away he is from such experiences, the smaller in scale or less significant they will seem. He misses the underlying point that those dots are still part of the picture, and in the case of Dallas’s bullying, sometimes it’s better to find a way to erase problematic “dots” from life’s experiences and move on to better things, which will in turn create a better picture.

“[Safer’s mom] turns to Candy. ‘His color theory was amazing. Instead of using purple, he would put a dab of red next to a dab of blue, and together the colors would be perceived as purple. In the mind of the viewer.’”

This passage deepens the reader’s understanding of Seurat’s pointillism. It also articulates the importance of perception in the novel—the experience of the image is the result of the viewer’s distance, which causes the colors to appear to blend together. The mind creates the larger image based not on reality, but on how it perceives the totality of the scene.

“It’s like the hard G and the soft G, is what I want to tell Bob. The hard G goes to school, and nothing can hurt him. And the soft G is the one who’s talking to you right now. Except he’s only talking in my head. I used to know which one was the real me, but now I’m not so sure. Now it’s like maybe there is no real me.”

Georges describes feelings of dissociation in this quote. By separating himself into two separate versions, one of which cannot be “hurt,” he is attempting to protect a vulnerable part of himself. He is hiding what he might refer to as a “weak spot” that Dallas could poke. As is evident from this quote, that type of separation is not possible, and Georges feels like he’s losing himself to the blank numbness that helps him to present a “hard” face when confronted with life’s difficulties.

“Mandy walks away saying, ‘Blah-blah-blah-whatever!’ But her face is all red and I almost feel sorry for her.”

In this scene, one of Dallas’s so-called friends dares to resist him, though she does it for the sake of her own interests rather than out of a desire to help Georges. Dallas’s reaction supports the idea that the bully’s friends may, as Safer and Candy suggest, act as “friends’ “to bullies only in order to avoid becoming targets themselves. Even minor pushback earns Mandy a cutting and embarrassing insult in front of the other students, and although Georges “almost” feels sorry for her, he knows that her stint as Dallas’s target will be relatively short.

“Now I will have to ‘pick my team.’ And I have to be careful, because if a kid is picked last, it can absolutely destroy his or her self-confidence. I decide that the best thing to do is to choose the kids who are normally picked last, first. I know exactly who they are. Everyone in the room knows who they are.”

The decision to create a team of the “uncool” kids serves two functions: First, it develops Georges’s characterization as a thoughtful, insightful kid who cares about other people’s feelings; second, it provides the foundations for The Blue Team to come together, unifying all the outcasts into a single group that provides support and community to every member.

“‘I gave you a gift,’ Safer calls after me softly. ‘Now you know exactly what kind of person you are. You’re brave, Georges! Your skills need work, but you’re brave!’”

Though Georges is irritated that Safer pretended to be in danger to trick him into entering Mr. X’s apartment, Safer offers a different perspective. Georges’s choice to come to Safer’s rescue despite his real fear shows that he’s a brave person. The danger was not real, but Georges didn’t know that—he acted as though Safer’s life was in jeopardy. His instinct to help his friend despite the risk establishes his courage.

“I’ve wondered this too. Specifically, I’ve wondered it about Jason. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they think that if they sit there, they won’t be victims, or whatever.’

‘So why don’t you sit there?’

‘Because I would rather be a jerk’s victim than a jerk’s friend.’”

Georges recognizes the possibility that Dallas’s friends only act like his friends because they’re afraid they will become his next targets if they do not follow his lead. Georges himself is too principled to succumb to this type of peer pressure, for his moral code would not allow him to sit quietly by while Dallas bullied someone else.

“‘You know what I would do?’ Candy says. ‘I would decide that my table is the cool table. Anyone could sit there. And that would be that.’

‘You can’t just do that,’ I tell her.

‘Why not? Why do you get to make the rules?’”

Candy challenges the very definition of the “cool table” in this scene. When Georges protests that it doesn’t work that way, Candy then challenges the rule that limits the definition of “cool” in such a way. In this moment, Candy advocates for a shift in perception and for a challenge to the rules (or status quo) that uphold the social hierarchy of the school lunchroom. This conversation is significant because it inspires Georges’s later solution to Dallas’s intention to bully other students based on the results of the taste test in science class.

“‘[Mom] always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don’t matter in the long run.’

[Dad] blinks. ‘But they matter now, Georges. They matter a lot. What were you planning to do, just hold your breath all the way through middle school? […] I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you’ll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what’s happening now, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening now, and you can’t just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.’”

Georges’s dad offers another perspective on Georges’s theory about the big picture and the little things. Though Georges has kept his eyes trained on the future and what that picture will look like, his father insists that the small things that make up day-to-day occurrences matter just as much. Within this new framework of perceiving the world, Georges can finally change his approach to Dallas and Carter’s harassment. Once he is given permission to take the bullying seriously, he sees resistance not only as possible, but as worth doing.

“There are all kinds of rules. There are written-down school rules like Dad is talking about, and there are rules we just live with without even asking ourselves why. Candy is right. Why shouldn’t her table be the cool table? Who says I have to try to steal the other team’s flag? Why does Bob have to spell dumb with a B? What if you decided to make your own rules?”

This shift in perspective—from caring only about the big picture to acknowledging that “the dots matter” (149)—opens Georges to a new world of possibilities. Rather than feeling like he must present an impenetrable surface to his bullies, Georges decides that he can change the game and the rules entirely. If he does not play by the “rules” of the taste test and the school hierarchy, then Georges can rewrite Dallas’s narrative and undermine his power.

“The former members of the Blue Team are scattered all over the cafeteria at lunchtime—twelve bodies orbiting the white-hot sun of the cool table. There are a few loners like me and Bob, a few twos like Carl and Karl, and one group of three: Chad, Anita, and Paul. We’re like Seurat’s orange dots hidden in the bright green grass, the ones you don’t even see unless you know how to look for them.”

The symbolic use of pointillism continues in this passage, where Georges describes the members of the Blue Team as more of Seurat’s dots. This time, instead of seeing individuals as isolated dots, he sees them as part of a group that are scattered but are still present if “you know how to look for them.” This reflects the growing sense of unity and belonging that Georges is beginning to feel at school.

“Who is Jason now, I wonder? If he reads that note and passes it to Dallas or Carter, everything will be ruined.”

Throughout the novel, Georges misses his old friend Jason and wonders how much Jason has changed now that he hangs out with Dallas and Carter instead. When Georges allows David Rosen to hand the note to Jason, it’s a test of Jason’s character to find out if he will stand by Georges and the outcasts or betray their plan to Carter and Dallas. When Jason joins them, it’s a first step towards repairing his friendship with Georges, and the Blue Team also gains another member in a revolution that seeks to undermine the isolation and lack of community that the more marginalized students have endured all year.

“Am I afraid of anything? Yes, I am afraid of something. There’s one thing I am horribly, disgustingly afraid of. Something that I think could never heal. Something that would not stop hurting no matter how old I get or how big my picture is.”

Georges finally confesses the truth of his mother’s illness to himself. He has been avoiding the truth because of the immense fear he feels about losing his mother, but in this moment, he is no longer able to avoid reality. Acknowledging that she is sick and that he is afraid is a first step in the direction of facing his fear and coping with the stress of it in a healthier way.

“But as the plane flew lower and the pressure built in her ears, she found that she did not want to land. She wanted to stay above all of it, partly because it was beautiful, and partly because she understood that all the time she had been in the air, her connection to home had been stretching like a rubber band. It had stretched very far, so far that she was afraid that when the plane touched down, the rubber band would break, and a part of her life would be over.”

Georges’s mother describes feeling conscious of being in the liminal space of travel—the space in between her departure and her arrival. She recognizes that there is something special about this space and fears that when she lands, something in her will change, and that the person she was and the life she used to live will be fundamentally gone.

“Walking down the hospital hallway, matching my steps to Dad’s, I suddenly did not want to see her, to actually arrive at the door to her room, because as long as I did not get there, I was still in the part of my life when she was not sick.”

Georges describes an awareness of a liminal state similar to the one his mother once experienced in the airplane. He understands that once he sees his mother in her hospital bed, her illness will become real and undeniable. He’s so afraid of losing her that he instinctively wants to stay in a space where he can pretend that she’s not sick at all. This is another example of the way Georges avoids or looks away from hard truths so that he will not have to confront them and their implications.