Son of a Trickster

“The world is hard, his mom liked to say. You have to be harder.” 

Maggie’s approach to life is one of toughened resentment and callous violence; she is unemotional and criticizes Jared whenever he expresses sadness. After a traumatic childhood, Maggie grew into someone who faces any hardships with brazen grit in an attempt of self-preservation. She expects Jared to approach life the same way so that his compassion is not taken advantage of.

“Don’t tell anyone I talked to you, okay? I have enemies and I don’t want you to be any more of a target than you already are.” 

A raven speaks to Jared for the first time after his encounter with David in the mall, reassuring him that Maggie and Richie have scared him out of town. Jared is convinced this is just a “pot hallucination” and only later uncovers that the speaking raven is Wee’git, his father. 

“My pretty, pretty enabler. Repeat after me: I’m not responsible for the crappy decisions of the grown-ups in my life.” 

Nana Sophia reminds Jared not to spend his Christmas money on his family, gently admonishing him for being their enabler. Even though Jared knows the adults in his life make their own decisions, he cannot help but feel responsible to help them, even when their behavior is self-destructive. His family often takes advantage of his compassion, perpetuating their dysfunctional dynamic.

“Philip Martin isn’t your father, Jared [...] I’m your real dad. My name is Wee’git. Your mother shot me in the head when—” 

Wee’git takes the form of a human man and tries to explain who he is to Jared on a city bus. He presents an opportunity for Jared to learn about his past, but Jared is too disturbed by the encounter and avoids him, thinking the man is just another “crazy” on the bus. The text implies that Wee’git transforms into a raven when he gets off the bus, but Jared does not yet recognize the signs.

“The thing he’d never told anyone, not a single soul, ever, was that in that moment, in a weird, weird dream, he’d popped out of his body [...] he saw himself on the stretcher—his frozen face, his blank eyes—and Mrs. Jaks lifted him up and put him back in his body.” 

The night of his assault, Jared commits his first act of magic—though Wee’git only confirms this for him much later. His spirit leaves his body, and he visits Mrs. Jaks’ spirit, who comforts him and returns him to his physical self. Jared spends years thinking this was a dream, when in fact he was transcending the human realm into the spiritual one. 

“David had been charged with assault for breaking Jared’s ribs. But so was his mom, for nail-gunning David to the floor and leaving him there all night. Her assault charges would have been dropped, or at least her sentence would have been lighter, if she’d played the helpless young mother valiantly protecting her young, but every second David was in court, she radiated homicidal intentions.” 

Jared reveals that the “bitter, bitter end” of Maggie’s relationship to David was when David physically assaulted Jared for his bad grades (34). Maggie, whom David had been consistently abusing, too, retaliated with a nail gun and refused to play “the helpless young mother.” Even at the expense of Jared and her own prison sentence, Maggie was adamant about “being harder” than whatever the world was handing her.

“Sometimes Jared wondered if he wasn’t, sort of, a little, wackadoodle. Like today. Getting all freaked out over an old lady. Maybe you should cut back on the hooch, genius, his inner voice said. Is that me? Did I think that? Am I mental? Did I imagine all that?” 

Jared starts to doubt his own sanity after his interaction with the old woman on the highway, who later is revealed to be Jwa’sins—Wee’git’s brother and Jared’s aunt. Thinking these “hallucinations” are a result of his excessive drinking and smoking, he tries to minimize the incident; even then, the visions become more perceptible and persistent, until he finally finds out that he has supernatural abilities and sees spirits.

“He felt his eyes going heavy, but he fought sleep. He wanted to stay here, in the quiet moment, when everything was calm and everyone was safe.” 

The Jakses’ house is Jared’s safe space, where Mrs. Jaks fills a maternal role in his life, and where he can escape from his troublesome family life. Even with Sarah, his feelings of contentment and peace are always short-lived, however; this time, Maggie punctures his safety bubble when she bombards him with text messages as she experiences withdrawal symptoms. 

“He wanted to believe his mom was sorry, but his dad was always sorry and he still kept doing crap he had to say sorry for. He didn’t want to be a sucker, but he didn’t want to be alone. Everything ached and all the choices felt wrong.” 

Jared’s sense of security at the Jakses’ immediately dissipates when his mom sends him a series of texts trying to explain herself to him. Jared has suffered significant trauma because of his parents’ addictions; he regularly must choose whether to forgive or excuse his parents’ behavior, even when he knows it is cyclical, to maintain some sense of family. 

“He wished people could make undying declarations of love and loyalty to him when they weren’t half-cut or stoned out of their gourds. Or sorry.” 

Jared finds it difficult to appreciate and internalize Sarah’s devotion to him, because she expresses it while high. Most people who are significant in Jared’s life struggle with addiction, which has fundamentally altered the way he perceives their affection and love. 

“When you shift out of our dimensions, you run the risk of dispersion so profound, even the memory of you is obliterated. Universes are stubbornly separate. Unless you are a Trickster.” 

The unknown narrator explains that Tricksters can transcend universes and shift in and out of various dimensions. Jared has been able to do this a number of times: when his spirit met Mrs. Jaks’, when he sees himself outside of his body at the rest stop, and when he sees himself from Wee’git’s point of view. Wee’git later encourages him to shapeshift and disappear with him, suggesting that he does have some Trickster powers, even though Maggie insists he is not capable of any real magic.  

“I’m glad you came to me when you were lost,’ she said, putting her cup down carefully. ‘I would have been lost without you.’” 

Jared finally confronts Mrs. Jaks about the “dream” in which his spirit met hers, but she explains that he was sleepwalking. She does not disclose that she is a witch or confirm that Jared’s dream was real, but she does express her gratitude to him for coming to her. It is unclear whether she is alluding to their spirits meeting or Jared staying with her while Maggie was in prison, but either way, her relationship with Jared has had as much of an impact on her as it has had on him. 

“She was about three feet tall and slender. Her paws were slightly webbed with long, sharp-looking claws. When she smiled, her teeth were pointed [...] A pack of river otters rippled through the bushes towards them, giggling as they swarmed the tallest one, who had been Fake Sarah.” 

After Jared is lured to the woods by what appears to be Baby and Sarah, the “Fake Sarah” transforms into a river otter and many other otters appear with the intent to “stop” Jared. This vision prompts him to reach out to Nana Sophia and to talk to his mother about what he saw, and he learns that he is seeing spirits. They both react strongly to the news. The others’ danger is revealed in Chapter 35, when they kidnap Jared and almost kill him. 

“He had trouble saying the crazy. Admitting it. Because it was weird. And he didn’t want her to see him as weaker than she already did.” 

Jared has kept his dreams, visions, and bizarre encounters a secret from his mother, fearing that Maggie will judge him and see him as weak or insane—a fear that demonstrates how dysfunctional their relationship is. Ironically, Maggie believes everything he says and can provide an explanation for all of it. The discovery of Jared’s powers bonds Jared and Maggie in an unprecedented way, and he begins to understand his mother on a deeper level than before.

“‘You are knee-deep in witches. You are neighbours with one. You are boning her granddaughter. You are sitting beside one right fucking now.’ [...] but witches meant…meant…a world that he thought he knew turned into something he didn’t know at all.” 

Maggie finally reveals that she, Mrs. Jaks, and Sarah are all witches, news that comes as a confusing, albeit relieving, shock to Jared. Even though the existence of magic assures Jared that all of his visions, voices, and strange encounters with Wee’git and Jwa’sins do not make him “wackadoodle,” it does mean that everything he fundamentally knows about himself, reality, and the world is now in question. 

“You can’t tell us apart from humans at the DNA level [...] We’re different on the sub-quantum level.”

The first truths Wee’git reveals after he helps Jared escape the cave is that he really is Jared’s father and is the voice in Jared’s head. Jared initially doubts him because of the paternity test Sophia ordered when Jared was born, but Wee’git explains that Tricksters’ DNA is not different enough from humans to show up on a test. Though not explicitly stated in the novel, the author elaborates in an interview that Wee’git shapeshifted into Phil Martin’s human form to hook up with Maggie, which resulted in Jared’s birth. Maggie even told Phil the truth about that night, but they kept the truth of Jared’s birth a secret from everyone.

“Since your first act of magic [...] You tell yourself it was a dream. When you shifted your consciousness out of phase with your body and went wandering around, hello-ing through dimensions.” 

After Wee’git helps Jared escape the river otter cave, he confirms that he is his “inner voice” and that he has been observing him since the night David assaulted him. He explains that Jared can alter his consciousness and transcend dimensions, as explained in Chapter 31.

“He messed with Mom and then with me. Fucker. You can’t really kill Tricksters [...] but you can put them out of commission while they pull themselves back together. I’ll just have to bury him deeper next time.” 

Maggie confirms Sophia’s statement from many years ago—that the Trickster has tormented Anita, too. Maggie also confirms that she did kill him (by shooting him in the head and drowning his body), but because he is supernatural, he was able to return. Now that he is back, and much earlier than Maggie expected, Maggie suggests that she will interact with him and try to incapacitate him once more.  

“He didn’t care if Nana—if Sofia killed him. She’d been his lifeline when things got dark. She’d been the one person who could make the crap seem less crappy. And she hated him now. And he hated himself and his life, and he heard himself choking on his snot and he was disgusted but he couldn’t stop.” 

Jared is absolutely devastated when he realizes that Nana Sophia is not his biological grandmother. She has been the only consistently kind and supportive adult in his life, but her attitude towards him suddenly mirrors the hate and distrust his maternal grandmother always held towards him. As a toddler, Sophia told him the Trickster has “been a huge dink to [his] mom’s family for generations” (12), and more than a decade later, the Trickster is still tearing apart Jared’s family.

“I never felt anything like that. It was…it was…like coming home. Like being alive for the first time ever.”

Sarah’s experience with magic and her fireflies is a much more positive experience for her than Jared. Earlier, she shares with Jared that she used to hear the fireflies when she was younger, suggesting that her magic has been suppressed until now. Even though her night with Jared elicits a type of awakening, her mental health, coupled with what Maggie calls her “unstable magic,” pushes Sarah to attempt suicide.

“It’s like when Vader used the Death Star to blow up Alderaan [...] Once you blast a place to smithereens, you can never go back.” 

Jared compares their overwhelming night of magic and Sarah’s consequent suicide attempt to the significant moment in Star Wars when Darth Vader annihilates Princess Leia’s home planet of Alderaan. Even though this comparison upsets Sarah, it is fitting given that Sarah occasionally dresses up like Leia, and she is preparing to be uprooted from the Jakses’ home. Destructive, irreparable relationships are abundant in the novel, as Jared and Maggie have lost relationships with nearly every member of their family.

“‘You stubborn dumb-ass,’ his mom said, slapping him lightly upside the head. ‘You may be done with magic, but that doesn’t mean magic is done with you.’” 

Thinking that surviving the otter cave has ended his encounters with magic, Jared refuses to learn any spells from Maggie. Maggie reminds him that he cannot will the supernatural away, no matter how much he wants to. Maggie has struggled extensively with addiction, perhaps in part because of magic’s role in her childhood and its unrelenting presence in her adult life.

“One day at a time, the chip read. On the other side: Recovery...begins with one sober hour.” 

With the help of Jwa’sins, Jared attends his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and realizes he is ready to begin recovery. Addiction is a prevalent theme in the novel, and despite being only 16, Jared is the only character who is willing to commit to sobriety, even at the cost of his friendships and relationship with his mother.