Speak #1

So far, the book is really interesting. It is easy to read and it is easy to relate since she is a high school student, like my sister had said. The book starts of with Melinda's first day of high school, Merryweather High School. She is completely alone because the ones who were her friends were with different groups of friends. They all go to the auditorium and the only person that talks to her, is a girl called Heather. A teacher, "Mr.Neck" does a presentation on what to expect from high school but Melinda expects it to be horrible. In the beginning of the book it is not said what happened to Melinda but we know something happened because no one, not even her closest friends from middle school, were talking to her. The best thing about her first day, was art class. In the first two weeks of school, the only "friend" Melinda has is Heather but they don't have a lot in common and they are not very close. Melinda is usually alone and communicates with her parents by leaving them notes. Her parents don't seem to make much effort to talk to her or find out what is happening. In her room, she hides her mirror in the closet because of her gross lips, because she has started biting them. One day at the bathroom, Melinda sees who used to be her best friend, Rachel. She notices how Rachel has entirely changed. She changed her name to Rachelle and hangs out with foreign exchange students.

One day as Melinda went to study hall, she finds an abandoned janitor's closet so she decides to make it hers as a sort of place to go when she didn't want to go somewhere. That's why she steals some late passes from her teacher. At a pep rally, a girl recognizes Melinda and asks her if she was the one who called the police at the party that took place over the summer but Melinda doesn't know what to say. We don't know yet what happened over the summer, but we kept getting hints and now we know that Melinda called the police at a summer party.

We see how throughout the book Melinda makes fun of her teachers and she has a lot to say about the people around her but she doesn't speak to other people about it she only thinks about it. Melinda's parents receive her progress reports and try to talk to her about the bad grades at dinner but Melinda doesn't tell them much and leaves to her room. For Halloween, she stays in her room remembering last year's Halloween and how she dressed up with her friends. At school Melinda is still being isolated, while her friend Heather has joined a clique of girls that do volunteer work. One day, at school in the hallway, she says who she calls IT and he smiles and winks at her and she feels like throwing up, we don't know why yet though. Melinda's parents make her stay after school to get help from her teachers and improve her bad grades. She doesn't do that and instead uses the time to decorate her janitor's closet. Melinda is also finding it difficult to speak; in addition to her sore and bitten lips, her throat constantly hurts, which makes sense with the book's title. For thanksgiving, nothing goes as planned and she ends up eating pizza with her parents for dinner. In the following chapters, Melinda talks about stuff happening in her life and connects them with childhood memories.

On Christmas day, Melinda's parents gave her some charcoal pencils and a sketch pad because they had noticed her interest in drawing. Melinda is surprised and touched by the fact that her parents actually noticed something about her and almost tells them about being attacked. The night of the party last summer, the party the girl at the pep rally mentioned, Melinda came home late instead of spending the night with friends. Neither of her parents were home, her mom got home at about 2am and her dad arrived around dawn. So Melinda doesn't know how to tell them about that night without also addressing their own whereabouts. Melinda sees IT again and he whispers in her ear causing her to panic and run away.

Melinda's guidance counselor calls her mom to warn her about Melinda's continued bad grades. Melinda's parents get mad at her and start asking her questions, but Melinda continues to ignore their attempts to find out why she is doing so poorly in school so they decide to ground her. Melinda finds a paperclip and scratches her wrist and her mom just tells her to stop it. As Melinda sits with Heather and her clique, we find out that Andy Evans is IT. He comes over to talk to them and starts to play with Melinda's hair so she runs away and vomits in the bathroom.

This is about half of the book and we don't quite know yet what exactly happened at the party during the summer. We only know that she called the police and that maybe it has something to do with IT, because she keeps running away from him.