40 pages • 1 hour read
Invisible Emmie
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Chapters 9-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Emmie delays heading to gym class. She thinks gym is a form of torture because it’s just one humiliating experience after another. Illustrations show Emmie being hit in the head with a ball multiple times as she laments her total lack of athletic ability. Emmie’s mother did not take up athleticism until she was older and tells Emmie she will do the same, but Emmie has her doubts. Most of all, Emmie dreads changing in the locker room, and she draws herself with a spotlight shining down as she changes. She adds, however, that nobody ever looks at her because she’s “quiet, skinny, and flat” (62). As Katie walks by in her towel, Emmie watches her.
Chapter 10 Summary
Katie heads to the locker room and happily chats with her friends as they all get changed. Emmie can be seen in the corner, staring at the other girls as they have fun together. Gym class isn’t Katie’s favorite time of day, but she embraces it and excels. Afterward, she and her friends sit and talk about boys, which Katie admits “gets a little boring after a while” (65). She walks out of gym class with a sway in her step and “not one hair out of place” (65). Emmie can be seen trailing behind her, looking haggard and downtrodden.
Chapter 11 Summary
Emmie leaves gym class and heads to English. Along the way, she passes a boy named Tyler Ross and identifies him as her crush. It’s the same boy who is rumored to have a crush on Katie. As she walks past him, Emmie can’t bring herself to lift her head and ends up stumbling. Tyler and his friend laugh at her as she cringes. Emmie met Tyler in kindergarten, but he never noticed her. In fourth grade, he picked up her eraser and handed it to her, and a large black heart above Emmie’s head indicates that her feelings emerged at that moment. Emmie remembers how Brianna developed a crush on Tyler’s best friend and how they would follow them around, giggling to themselves. When Emmie’s mother found out, Emmie made her promise never to mention it again—an illustration shows Emmie as a raging monster with bloodshot eyes and fangs. As the years went on, Emmie’s crush persisted. She likes the way Tyler smiles and how he’s usually nice to everyone, and she draws pictures of herself marrying him.
Chapter 12 Summary
As the teacher’s words float above the students’ heads, Tyler passes a note to Katie asking her out. Katie agrees, and although she pretends to be calm, she is screaming on the inside: “TYLERASKEDMEOUT!!!!!”
Chapter 13 Summary
At lunch, Emmie sits with Brianna. She laughs with Brianna as they talk about their crushes. Brianna suggests writing love poems and produces one that is overly sappy and meant to be funny. When she reads Emmie’s poem, she notes that it’s “kinda beautiful” and encourages Emmie to talk to Tyler. They joke some more, and after lunch ends, Emmie rushes to her next class. She drops her poem without noticing, and Joe Lungo, the boy who was peeking at her drawing earlier, picks it up.
Chapter 14 Summary
Chapter 15 Summary
Emmie draws her stomach before and after lunch, with the former being a scribbled mess and the latter being “almost normalish.” She feels victorious in calming down, so she walks taller. The heat is off in her health classroom, so the class goes to the library, which makes Emmie happy; she feels at home in its quiet atmosphere. She is surprised to see Brianna there, and they sit together, but Brianna insists on studying. She lectures Emmie for not doing the same but lets Emmie sketch her, as it keeps her occupied. When Emmie finishes her sketch, Brianna asks her to adjust the face, and Emmie makes Brianna laugh by drawing a silly cartoon version of her.
The previous weekend, Brianna questioned Emmie for being so talkative with her but so quiet and withdrawn at school and told Emmie to be more outgoing. Emmie felt like Brianna was being “righteous and bossy” and didn’t understand how things might be more difficult for her (94). Emmie confesses that she stays quiet to avoid drama, but she knows it’s also the reason her stomach always feels knotted.
Chapter 16 Summary
Katie is also in Emmie’s health class, and at the library, she and her friends analyze Tyler’s texts to her. Katie is smitten and thinks that Tyler is already in love with her.
Chapters 9-16 Analysis
At this point in the story, Emmie starts to enter the panels in Katie’s chapters more frequently. She is shown watching Katie in the locker room and then trudging behind Katie after gym class. Naturally, Katie has “not one hair out of place” (65), whereas Emmie refers to herself as smelling and looking like a bird’s nest. In the locker room, Emmie draws herself changing with a spotlight shining down on her but nobody around. The scene symbolizes Emmie’s constant fear of being judged, which in many ways is unfounded. She realizes this, saying, “I don’t know why I feel so self-conscious. It’s not like anyone is looking at me” (62).
Emmie slowly starts to reveal more about herself in these chapters. She talks about when she developed a crush on Tyler and how her mother found out, which embarrassed her. Here, Emmie is shown with wide, bulging, bloodshot eyes and fangs instead of teeth. Not only does Emmie hate when her parents embarrass her, but she also refuses to tell Tyler about her crush despite Brianna’s regular encouragement. Emmie also reveals herself to be a budding poet, as the poem she writes for Tyler is, as Brianna puts it, beautiful. The poem shows a deeper side to Emmie, a desire to form stronger connections with others. This is a desire she rarely expresses out loud, preferring to live through her created character, Katie. She admits that she, in some ways, stays quiet on purpose to avoid school drama but also suspects that her stomach is always knotted up because she keeps so much inside. Emmie is pressured to be more outgoing from all angles: Her parents, her best friend, and her imaginary character, Katie, all tell Emmie that she should open up. Emmie knows she should, but it will take being pushed to the limit for her to overcome her anxiety and stand up to her bully.
Just before Joe Lungo finds the love poem, Emmie ironically begins to feel better. Her stomach relaxes, which she indicates by drawing a picture of a scribbly stomach and a regular stomach. She spends lunch with Brianna, and they laugh and have fun together as they write their love poems. Emmie’s body language changes, and she begins to walk taller even though she risks having something flung at her head: “When I walk to my locker to exchange my books and put away my lunch bag, I walk a little taller. Of course, I’m putting my head at risk, but my mom and Yoga Lady would be proud of my ‘blooming spine’” (87). She is proud of herself for Coping With and Overcoming Anxiety; little does she know that all her progress is about to be erased when she finds out that Joe has the poem.
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