I appreciate the growth of the kids as they live in Welch. It becomes apparent that since their parents can’t really support them, the Walls kids have had to learn to provide for themselves. In school, the kids seemed to have no friends. The kids had to scrounge through the garbage in order to be able to eat during school. Poor Jeannette had an unnecessary amount of sexual harassment issues as well, before and while she was at Welch. Lori essentially became the prominent family figure to the children. As the oldest child, she was the one that started to have thoughts about the future. She and Jeannette had decided on the idea to save up money so that they can go to New York when they graduate. All of the Walls kids had to get jobs in order to survive, Jeannette babysat, worked at a jewelry store, and wrote for the school paper (although that wasn’t exactly a paid job). Lori took art commissions and Brian did manual labor. When their mom left to renew her license, Lori went to an art camp; leaving Jeannette as the authority in the house. This duration of time shows how manipulative her dad is, Jeannette had a specific budget planned out and it was perfectly able to support her family while her mom was gone. Her dad keeps manipulating Jeannette to give him money for alcohol, and she finds it hard to decline. After giving away too much money, her dad comes back to her and asks her to help him gain all of the lost money back. He takes her with him as he swindles a man named Robbie out of his money. Robbie got upset for losing his money, but he asks if Jeannette wanted to go to his apartment upstairs and listen to some music. Expecting her dad to help her, he just tells Robbie “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”. The two (Jeannette and Robbie) go upstairs and, as Jeannette expected, he tried to undress her. He gets beaten away by Jeannette and also got disgusted by the alarming amount of wounds and scars that Jeannette had amassed over the years. Expecting her dad to beat up Robbie for trying to assault her, Jeannette tells him what had happened. Rex replies with “I’m sure he just pawed you some, I knew you could handle yourself.” How would you feel if you were in Jeannette’s shoes, having whatever trust you had left in your parent seemingly thrown out of the window?

I appreciate the clear growth of the Walls kids, and the slow but obvious decline of their parents. It’s interesting seeing that as the kids grow older, they start to doubt their parents. We start seeing how childish and irresponsible their mother is. When the kids are struggling to feed themselves, they discover that their mom was spending precious shopping money on chocolate that she’s been eating by herself. They learn more about how moody their mother is, and how her irresponsibility leads her to having issues in her job. The book even mentions that when their mom left on vacation to renew her teaching license; she enjoyed her free time there so much she decided to quit her job, so it made her trip essentially worthless. The dad is almost never home, and instead, he stays in bars for the entire day. The book makes a point about Jeannette having to find and drag her dad out of bars whenever she needs him for something. We get a deeper look at why Rex Walls left this place too; seeing as how awful his mom treats the Walls kids. After a “specific incident” between Brian and Rex’s mom; the kids get a possible, yet horrifying idea as to why their dad tried his hardest to leave this place.