As the book begins, the reader only has a dim understanding that something is wrong with Ollie. She has withdrawn from school activities and buries herself in bike rides and books. We know she is escaping from something, but that something won’t be apparent until much later. It isn’t until we learn that her mother died a year earlier that Ollie’s behavior becomes comprehensible. She embodies one of the book’s central themes in her denial of the loss of her mother.

Initially, this emotional blockage manifests in small ways, such as Ollie’s aversion to sympathy. “Mr. Easton looked sympathetic now. […] Ollie did not mind impatient teachers, but she did not like sympathy face. She crossed her arms” (4). She is equally resistant to her father’s attempts to be understanding: “Her dad quit stirring the sauce and came and sat down beside her. Now he was going to be understanding. She hated understanding voice as much as she hated sympathy face. Ollie felt her ears start to burn” (22).

Ollie recognizes that others feel sorry for her loss, but this is a loss she is unready to acknowledge. Her solution is to withdraw from people completely. She says, “At least the book had romance and high-seas adventures and other absolutely not Evansburg things.