Twisted

Bill and Linda get home from their marriage-counseling appointment and realize Tyler has been injured. Linda wants to call the police but Bill hesitates. When Linda leaves the room, Tyler confesses it was Chip who attacked him, but that he will not turn him in. Bill agrees.

Bill walks to the bookcase and retrieves some brochures, bringing them to Tyler. They are all for military schools. He explains that once the matter with the photographs is settled, he is going to send in Tyler’s applications for the schools. Tyler is disgusted, but Bill protests that going away to school will give him a do-over that he desperately needs.

Linda returns to the room and sees Tyler shredding the school brochures. Tyler goes to his room while Bill and Linda fight. 

Due to his injuries, Tyler stays home from school. He begins to contemplate all of the things going wrong in his life, and whether he should stop toying with the idea of suicide and make a plan. He recalls that he promised himself he would not kill himself unless things were really serious. He’s now convinced they are.

He contemplates the ways in which he could commit the act: shooting himself with his father’s gun or drinking himself to death. He decides both would be too messy and it would be unfair to leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

He makes himself some food and decides where and how he will end his life.

Tyler uses a key that he stole from Joe the janitor to access the roof of his high school. He carefully considers from which part of the roof he should jump but rules them all out based on who will end up witnessing the jump or have to clean up his body. Tyler changes his plan to drowning in freezing water, where his body will not look so mangled when people find it.

While he’s contemplating, Joe opens the door to the roof and asks Tyler what he’s doing there. The two discuss the weather and the work they did on the roof the previous summer. Joe does not let on whether he knows what Tyler is doing there and coaxes him back inside. 

Tyler awakes the next day, his eighteenth birthday. He lies in bed listing all the things he can do now that he’s eighteen. He recalls his mother baking cupcakes for him to bring to school when he was younger, but he never had a birthday party: “I knew [a party] would be a total disaster, so whenever they asked if I wanted one, I said no. Secretly, I wanted a bowling party, but was afraid to bring it up” (198). It’s then Tyler decides he won’t kill himself and will run away instead. 

Hannah opens Tyler’s door and says, “Mom says you shouldn’t sleep all morning,” (199). She slams the door and opens it again, lamenting that she is sick but her mother signed her up for babysitting. She slams the door once more and opens it a third time to wish Tyler a happy birthday.

Overnight, Tyler has decided that suicide is not the best plan but running away is. Based on his conversation with Joe the night before, he chooses Minnesota. 

Tyler drafts a letter to his family explaining that he’s run away. He realizes that he’s misspelled Massachusetts and does not want his farewell letter to have typos. Since his computer and phone have been taken away, he must manually look up the proper spelling downstairs.

When he returns to his room Hannah is there, holding the letter. She demands, “Are you serious? You’re running away?” (203). Hannah makes him promise that he will not do anything until she gets home. She leaves for babysitting.

Tyler quickly dismisses his promise to Hannah and calls the train station to set his plan in motion. He estimates the amount of money he will need to make it to Minnesota by train. He goes to his father’s room to find money. He finds his driver’s license on his father’s dresser and pockets it. He sees his father’s shaving tools and has a fond memory of when they used to “shave” together, though Tyler’s razor was a comb.

He finds $500 rolled up in one of his father’s shoes. Just as he is about to leave the room, he feels himself drawn to his father’s gun, a Beretta that used to belong to his grandfather.

Tyler pulls out the gun and loads it. He smells it, holds it, even tastes it. He stands before his father’s mirror and puts the barrel in his mouth. He realizes he is too tall to see himself in his father’s mirror. He laments that he does not fit, in the mirror or in his life: “[b]ut, really, I didn’t want to fit. That’s why it was hard” (212).

Tyler puts the gun down and goes to the bathroom to throw up. He unloads the gun and takes it with him when he leaves his father’s room. He also goes to grab his baseball bat. 

Tyler takes the gun and goes immediately to Yoda’s house. He asks Yoda to take him to the batting cages, where he spends $20 of his father’s money. Tyler keeps missing the ball, until Yoda instructs him to fantasize that the ball represents a person. He hits several in a row. 

Afterward, he directs Yoda to the park, where Tyler dumps the gun and bullets into the lake. Yoda is horrified that Tyler has a gun and concedes that “guns are dangerous” (219). Yoda tries to joke, “you got any grenades in [that backpack]?” (219). As they drive back to Yoda’s house, Tyler pops the new blisters on his hand, remembering that callouses build up faster if you burst the blisters. 

Tyler finishes his homework for English, History, French, Calculus, and Art History:

I had to define ‘renaissance.’ At first I wrote ‘gathering of military intelligence, like for a raid.’ Then I looked it up in the dictionary. Renaissance meant ‘rebirth’ and was a ‘revival of culture and learning.’ The other word I was thinking of was ‘reconnaissance.’ An understandable mistake (220).

The next day, Tyler turns in all of his homework, apologizes to Joe the janitor for stealing keys from him, tells Principal Hughes he will be returning to regular classes, and changes his schedule to a more manageable one for the next semester. He then deposits a pink satin blanket in front of Chip in the lunchroom. We find out that it’s the blanket that Chip and his cronies placed over Tyler’s head when they beat him up. Tyler taunts Chip, but no one throws a punch.

Tyler goes to visit his probation officer for a final time. Mr. Benson says that as long as nothing comes of the Bethany photographs, he will give him a good report in court.

Tyler rides home on the bus, finally feeling he has a purpose. 

When Tyler arrives home, he finds out that another student has been arrested for taking and distributing the photos of Bethany. The police officer returns Tyler’s computer. Mrs. Miller and Tyler are relieved, but circumspect. Just as they sit down to dinner, a drunk Mr. Miller crashes into the garage and storms inside. He faults Tyler for getting him fired and goes to his basement lair. Refusing to put up with his father’s abusive behavior any longer, Tyler gets his baseball bat and goes to the basement. 

Mr. Miller threatens Tyler, but Tyler snaps and tells his father to shut up. He raises the baseball bat over his head and smashes his father’s train set into pieces. Everyone falls silent. Tyler returns the money he took from his father and discloses first his plan of running away and then his plan of suicide by using his father’s gun. He lets them know he will be changing his schedule next semester and returning to work with the landscaping company. He indicates his father should clean up the broken train set. 

Tyler goes to Yoda’s for dinner. Yoda’s mother can tell something is wrong but, Tyler says, “[e]very time Mrs. Hodges asked me if I was feeling well, I did the polite thing and lied” (242). Mrs. Hodges suggests Tyler spend the night. As they watch television and eat junk food, Yoda suggests that Tyler stay with him until he finishes his senior year. Tyler declines, indicating that he has the guts to tough it out at home, and hopes he will “get lucky and they’ll arrest my dad for whatever happened in Omaha” (243).

When he returns home, Bill says he didn’t sleep at all and tries to make amends. They go inside and eat breakfast and end up consoling each other. 

The Millers have a regular day wherein Bill does not retreat to the basement, which Tyler views as progress. Before bed, Tyler plays Tophet and achieves the highest level. When the game asks if he wants to become Lord of Darkness or take his chances with reincarnation, he reveals only that he “chose wisely” (250).