Is it time for Goosebumps yet? No, still on Hush, Hush? Okay then…
Chapter 20
So now that Nora is finally putting together all this fallen angel crap, what’s going to happen next??
Well, for starters, Nora does some laundry. If that doesn’t set the tone for the final half of this book, I’m not sure what does. But then there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Elliot, so maybe things are going to get interesting?
“Nora Grey,” Elliot said in a patronizing voice. He leaned in and grinned, and I caught the sour tang of alcohol on his breath. “You’ve been causing me a lot of trouble lately.”
A teen drinking underage in Young Adult Fiction? This book just keeps the twists and turns coming.
So after being really creepy, Elliot tells Nora he wants her and Vee to go camping with him and Jules. That sounds like a nice resolution to all this drama! And maybe he won’t even brutally murder her in the woods like he probably did that other girl.
Then Nora makes one of the dumbest threats I’ve ever read in my entire life:
“Leave, or I’m calling a cab,” I said.
Now, I could understand why maybe she’d be wary of calling the cops, what with how fucking awful and useless they have proven to be multiple times in this book. But the fact is, two lines later she does threaten to call the police. So I’m not entirely sure why calling a cab was her first means of telling Elliot to get lost. Leave, or I’ll call you a helpful service that will safely take you home? I’m shakin’ in my knee-highs, Nor.
Nora’s mom comes downstairs; she doesn’t see what’s going on, but hearing her calling for Nora is enough to get Elliot to leave. But not before telling Nora, “This isn’t over.” What a shit.
As usual, Nora gives us a convoluted explanation as to why she won’t tell her mom what really happened and instead feeds her a line about a dude from school needing notes for class. Ah, Young Adult Fiction.
Nora gets a disturbing phone call from Vee who proves to be the Worst Friend Ever. She tries to convince Nora that everything Elliot did is excusable and that he’s totally not planning anything horrible in the forest! Let’s go camping!
Vee, being a huge dick, says Nora can borrow her car to go to Portland if she agrees to go camping and get murdered, and Nora does the smart thing and hangs up on her. I hope Vee gets brutally murdered by Elliot.
Nora heads to the diner where the dead girl in question used to work, trying to suss out whether or not Elliot murdered her. Yup, Nora is still shitty at doing this, and the waitress just gets annoyed with her.
“What do you recommend?”
“It’s all good. Ask my boyfriend.” She gave a tight smile. “He’s the cook.”
“Speaking of boyfriends…did Kjirsten have one?” Nice segue, I told myself.
“Spill,” Whitney demanded. “You a cop? A lawyer? A reporter?”
In the Hush, Hush universe it’s commonly known that cops always want to talk about boyfriends! Also I can’t tell if Nora was being sarcastic or not about that being a nice segue…because it fucking wasn’t.
Then we find out that even though Elliot said he was on a scholarship when he went to Kinghorn Prep, really it turns out he’s stinking rich and had bought Kjirsten her own apartment. This is a book about fallen angels, and this is somehow the most far-fetched thing I’m reading? Weird.
Whitney, the waitress, describes a weird instance where Jules walked in, asked if Kjirsten was working, and then called Elliot to inform him that she wasn’t. Then Elliot came in like he’d been avoiding her. This is stupid and not interesting at all. Chapter over.
21
So I just realized that Nora had this huge “realization” that Patch was a fallen angel…and then just didn’t think about it AT ALL since chapter 19 ended. What gives? Let’s see how long it takes for this to be addressed again.
Vee calls, and apparently she’s in the area partying it up with Elliot and Jules. In a bad part of town! Man, oh, man, things are heating up. I bet Patch is going to have to swoop in and rescue Nora from some cliche troubles at this party. Don’t women of all ages love it when men swoop in and rescue them! That happens in Twilight and Fifty Shades all the time! It’s almost as if they’re the same story…
The bus driver apparently gives Nora bad directions, because a crazy homeless lady tells Nora she’s headed the wrong direction to Highsmith. Personally, I’d trust the bus driver, but Nora seems to trust the lady pushing a cart of garbage bags.
Nora is so convinced of this woman’s directional skills that she barters away her jacket and hat. I can’t even with this book and Nora’s idiocy. But damn it, Nora draws the lines at giving her mittens away! Girl’s got principles.
It’s time to call Vee, but apparently Nora’s phone is in the jacket pocket, oh no! She turns back to go find the lady, but she sees a car stop by the alley. For Plot Reasons (and not because Nora has a lick of sense in her) she hides. She hears a car door open and gunfire, and then this happens:
The car door slammed and the black seden screeched away. I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and it blended with the sound of running feet. I realized a moment later that they were my feet, and I was running to the mouth of the alley.
I just heard the sound of fingers typing, and I realized that they were my fingers.
Anyway, the homeless lady is dead. Unfortunately, now there is blood all over Nora’s jacket, so that shit is ruined! Also, her phone isn’t in the pocket. Nora runs to a payphone to call the po po, but when she turns around the body is gone.
Somehow Nora has memorized Patch’s phone number from the one time he wrote it down on her hands. Oh, pleeezeee. So she calls him, and oh wow, CAN YOU GUESS????
Patch comes to her rescue…ug. Nora asks the real question at hand, though, whether or not he was playing pool. Apparently, yes, he was, and he was playing…for a condo? Does Fitzpatrick not exist in the real world? Apparently not.
Also, still no thoughts from Nora about Patch’s status as a possibly fallen angel.
Nora texts Vee from Patch’s phone, and Vee’s all, “We’re going home now la la the boys couldn’t find what they were looking for.” So I guess we’re supposed to be very convinced now that Elliot and Jules were looking for Nora to kill her. It would be a hilarious twist if they really were just total assholes but completely innocent. And perhaps what they went to look for was just drugs like normal teenagers in Young Adult Fiction.
Then Patch’s car breaks down, and a storm is a’brewin in the sky. But fear not there is a motel nearby, winky wink. Although, that also sounds like the plot to a bad horror movie as well as a shitty romance novel.
22
The phone lines are down at the motel, so they can’t call a cab, which means they have to spend the night there. Oh la la. Or, oh my god they’re about to get brutally murdered by the hotel staff/other clientele/Elliot.
Well, the clerk probably has a cell phone, right?
“I did. Until I couldn’t pay the bill anymore.” He drew his shoulders up. “What can I say, my mom’s cheap.”
Let’s recap. We have a broken down vehicle, a storm, phone lines down, a missing cell phone, a cell phone with a dead battery, a run down motel, a forty year old clerk who is one of the only people who does not have a cell phone, and horny teenagers.
That’s a lot of plot devices in one place.
“This is crazy,” I told Patch in an undertone.
So call me maybe Well, Nora’s kind of right in this case. This is pretty crazy.
“I’m crazy.” He was on the bring of smiling again. “About you.”
OH VOMASAURUS REX!!!!
Oh, now the lights went out. But don’t worry, the clerk has candles for mood lighting!
Also, Nora’s clothes are too wet to put back on…
But instead of sex happening, Patch goes to take a shower, and finally Nora thinks about the angel thing for like a hot second before telling herself she’s crazy.
The chapter ends with Nora touching Patch’s scar, and she’s “sucked into a soft, dark chute and everything went black.”
23
So we’re in Bo’s Arcade now, and I’m guessing this means we’re in one of Patch’s memories? Okay.
But wait, Nora sees Patch across the room, and then she tries to talk to him and he ignores her. Then she spots a calendar, revealing it’s last August. Nora follows Patch around until he runs into her school therapist, Miss Green. He refers to her as “Dabria”. That’s a really ugly name.
He asks what she’s doing there, and she says mysterious things about needing to see him even though their kinds don’t mix. She says she hasn’t given up on him, and she knows how she can get his wings back. He has to save a human life, and he can be a guardian (angel). He says he has better things planned, and then they make out. Nora’s kind of jelly and understandably weirded out. No wonder Miss Greene keeps telling her to stay away from Patch!
But it turns out Miss Greene is lying, and the book presents literally no mystery about this whatsoever, and Patch figures it out in a heartbeat and demands to know the truth. She tells him she knows he’s looking at The Book of Enoch. And it’s forbidden to read blah blah don’t know, don’t care.
Ultimately, Patch reveals to us that Dabria is an angel of death, and he asks for the name of the person she wants him to save. CAN YOU GUESS WHO IT IS????
Patch asks who is trying to kill Nora and Dabria has like a vision or something:
“There’s a shadow behind her. It’s him. He’s following her. She doesn’t see him…but he’s right there. Why doesn’t she see him? Why isn’t she running? I can’t see his face, it’s in shadow…”
Dabria’s eyes flew open. She sucked in a quick, sharp breath.
“Who?” Patch said.
Dabria curled her hands against her mouth. She was trembling as she raised her eyes to Patch’s.
“You,” she whispered.
Too over dramatic. I burst out laughing. Not the intended reaction, I guess.
Nora comes out of the memory, she and Patch wrestle a bit, and he’s all, “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead, I’ll explain this to you.” But he’s pissy about it.
Patch explains some things, and the one that makes the most sense is that he’s the one who put it in Coach’s mind to switch their seats in lab. Oh, Coach, maybe you aren’t so randomly fucking crazy after all. Nora asks if Patch tried to kill her on the Archangel, and then he says he was overlapping images with reality, and it’s a riddle (what the fuck???).
Nora insists that if she’s going to trust Patch, he has to let her touch his scars again. He says, “Keep in mind that people change, but the past doesn’t.”
Apparently Nora’s sparkling personality somehow reformed this bad boy? Because she’s so great…?
The chapter ends on a cliffhanger, what’s Nora gonna see next? Gosh, I just can’t wait to find out!
“I just heard the sound of fingers typing, and I realized that they were my fingers.” Hahahahaha!
If this was an adult novel, I’d bet Nora would see Patch’s penis. I wonder if Patch likes his as much as Christian does.
I work in a museum and so often give historical walking tours, we have a house that was won by a fairly prominent town citizen in a game of cards. Granted this was 70 years ago when the town was still comprised mostly of muskrat trappers, not high school students.
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What the hell do you have against Nora? Just cause Patch chose her over any other girl means nothin! Trust me, no use getting jealous of a book character. PLUS those were my fave chapters
BTWs its a GOOD book, just cause u think your too cool to read Becca Fitzpatrick’s masterpeice means shot to the world. U write a book and see if its better . I’m 90% sure u’ll fail.
Hi Jessica,
A warm welcome to BBGT! Even though it seems you weren’t happy with your experience here, I am pleased that someone (anyone) is actually reading our Hush, Hush posts. Given I often forget we ever read this, er, masterpiece, it’s nice to know people are still stumbling upon the posts.
You’ve brought up some interesting points in your comments so I’ll try to address all of them as patiently as I can given I’m very concerned you’re twelve years old as your writing level would imply.
1) I don’t really understand where I implied in this post that I was jealous of Nora. I gave it a read through and I’m often concerned for her because of the moronic decisions she makes. I am certainly not attracted to the fictional character Patch (nor is my partner Matt for that matter), and don’t find it particularly offensive that he chose Nora over me or any other girl given he is a fictional character and I was not in the running to be his GF 4 lyfe.
2) I don’t see how your prompt to go write my own book in order to prove that this is a bad book makes any sense. If you told me you didn’t like Sprite, I wouldn’t say, “Okay, Jessica. U go make a softdrink and see if its better. I’m 100% sure u’ll fail.” Because I am actually 100% sure you would fail. The fact is, I don’t like this book. I think it’s crap. Whether or not I could go write a book “better” than Hush, Hush is irrelevant.
3) I’m sorry you were offended that I mocked your favorite chapters. I hope you can continue to sleep at night knowing this post exists.
Still a 10% chance of you writing a better book Aer – I think you should do Hush, Hush again but then throw in some crab people for kicks.