53 pages • 1 hour read
Ashley ElstonThis Is Our Story
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6
Chapter 4 Summary
Kate is in the media arts room at school, alone. Henry enters. He’s doing janitorial work, a punishment for back-talking a teacher. Kate is captivated by the image of the privileged boy emptying garbage cans. She secretly takes photos of him. Before he leaves the room, however, he makes it clear that he knows she’s been photographing him.
In the girls’ bathroom, Kate finds an acquaintance of hers, Julianna Webb, trying to comfort another girl Bree Holder. Bree used to go to St. Bart’s with the River Point Boys. She transferred after an embarrassing incident, in which a compromising photo of her, along with two other girls, was leaked online. The girls were presumably given date-rape drugs before they were put in promiscuous poses. Julianna notes that it’s still unknown who took the photo.
Speaking to Mr. Stone that afternoon, Kate learns he’s going through Grant’s phone and reviewing text messages. He’s matching up contacts in Grant’s phone, which are stored under nicknames, with the actual phone numbers. Kate realizes that her secret connection with Grant will be discovered.
The chapter concludes with an excerpt of John Michael’s interview with a detective, conducted directly after Grant’s death. Kate is watching the video of the interview and providing recorded commentary regarding John Michael’s body language for Mr. Stone. The interview is cut short when John Michael’s parents show up and demand that he have a lawyer for any further questioning.
Chapter 5 Summary
Kate picks up fried catfish for Mr. Stone and her mom from Pat’s, who runs his take-away restaurant out of a large trailer. While there, Kate notices the River Point Boys across the parking lot. Pat reveals that the boys congregate there every day.
The boys appear to be arguing. From their body language, Kate can see that Shep and John Michael are on one side, while Henry and Logan are on the other. She takes photos of them. When Kate returns to Mr. Stone’s office with dinner, she tells him what she saw. He says that she should let him know if she sees anything else odd, a request that she takes as his permission to spy on the boys.
John Michael’s narration concludes the chapter. One of the boy’s fathers wants them all to take a lie detector test but the boys decide against it. There are too many complications surrounding Grant’s death: “Other events of the night find their way into the conversation—the drugs, the fights, the missing money—and we know silence is our best weapon” (62).
Chapter 6 Summary
At school, Julianna—who also used to go to St. Bart’s—reveals to Reagan and Kate that Bree was taken to the emergency room due to a panic attack. Bree transferred schools after the incident while another girl is being homeschooled. The third is still at St. Bart’s.
At work, Mrs. Marino confronts Kate about the fact that her number was found in Grant’s phone. Kate makes light of the connection, telling her mom she’d met Grant at the library a few weeks prior to his death. Mrs. Marino reveals that Kate’s number appears alongside the initials “FWS” but admits she doesn’t know what this means. Neither does Kate. Kate assures her mom that there is no personal connection to Grant and that she can handle working on the case.
Kate goes back to Pat’s to spy on the River Point Boys. From her car, she takes photos of them. She observes that Logan has a long thin red mark, like a fresh scar, running down his neck. Shep turns to look in her direction and she ducks down in her car to hide. She’s worried he saw her. Kate met Shep previously, alongside Grant. Afterwards, Shep sent her lewd texts asking her to send him a topless photo. She responded by sending him a photo of her middle finger.
The chapter concludes with an excerpt of Logan’s interview with a detective, conducted directly after Grant’s death. Kate is watching the video of the interview and providing recorded commentary regarding Logan’s body language for Mr. Stone. The detective note that there was evidence the boys had been fighting before Grant’s death. The interview is cut short when Logan asks for a lawyer.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Kate’s role as the thriller-mystery’s sleuth is affirmed after she speaks with Mr. Stone about what she saw at Pat’s. In response, Mr. Stone asks her to inform him about anything else interesting she might see. She thinks to herself, “I’m pretty sure I just got his permission to spy on the River Point Boys” (61). Kate is eager to embrace this role, although she’s aware that any direct contact with the boys would complicate the case. Mr. Stone has already warned her this would be a conflict of interest and demanded she stay away from the boys.
Kate is playing with fire, a fact that is reiterated by the investigation’s new incorporation of phone records. Kate’s number appearing in Grant’s phone raises her mother’s suspicions that Kate had some personal connection to the boy. This plot element adds a new mystery, namely why Kate’s number is saved as “FWS.” Given the other names Grant has saved in his phone (“Booty Call 3” and “Pit Stains”), it seems likely that “FWS” is offensive. Later, when the book clarifies that the “Grant” Kate was texting with was actually Shep (and that the few text messages she got from Shep were Grant) the reader will learn that “FWS” means “Fuck With Shep. ”
The important role of the date- and time-stamped text messages in the book becomes more evident as more of the exchanges between “Grant” and Kate are shared. A flirtatious text exchange between Kate and Grant opens Chapter 4. These are time-stamped after midnight, suggesting the intimacy that comes with late-night conversations. Kate reveals that she’s been rereading her and “Grant’s” old text exchanges since his death, referring to the behavior as an addiction.
Julianna introduces yet another mystery to the narrative. Formerly a St. Bart’s student, she provides the backstory to another prep school scandal: Three girls at St. Bart’s had compromising photos leaked online. None of the characters know who leaked the photos, but the reader can suspect one of the River Point Boys is to blame. This is thanks to John Michael’s comments regarding a private photo that reminds him of Grant's true character—implying that Grant is a bad person—at the end of Chapter 1. Having access to John Michael’s point-of-view gives the reader the advantage of having information that Kate doesn’t.
Regarding the photo scandal at St. Bart’s, Reagan notes that even if the perpetrator is caught, he likely won’t be punished: “It really sucks what happened to those girls. Freaking St. Bart’s. I bet if they find out who did it, they won’t get in any trouble just because of who their daddies are” (66). This echoes Kate’s previous sentiments regarding the unfair advantages given to privileged persons, the book’s central theme. The fact that even Reagan, who is portrayed as a sort of ditzy contrast to Kate, recognizes this drives home how true that fact is.
