50 pages • 1 hour read
Lindsay CurrieScritch Scratch
Lindsay CurrieFiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A 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 23-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary
Claire, Casley, and Emily arrive at Claire’s house. Claire’s mom has left dinner for her to put in the oven, with specific instructions. Claire puts the food in the oven and then sits Casley and Emily down and tells them everything. They talk about the white pants the ghost boy was wearing—Claire has learned that they are called knickerbockers—and the number 396 that keeps appearing. Emily wonders if the number could be a death toll. Claire and Casley both think this is a good idea, and Claire shows them the original piece of paper from the bus. Emily points out the paper’s strange shape. It looks like “a giant price tag” (141). The girls cannot find any disasters or accidents from the early 1900s with a death toll of 396. Claire feels hopeless.
Chapter 24 Summary
Sam comes home and is surprised to see Casley and Emily. They fill him in on what they have learned and he joins their investigation. Sam is convinced that the ghost boy is a victim of the Iroquois Theater Fire, which killed more than 200 children. Claire is less confident. She remembers that the ghost tried to talk to her on the bus, and today in the bathroom he said, “Where are they?” (119). The memory gives her chills. The ghost must be looking for something and must believe that Claire can help him. They all use their phones to do more research. As they discuss possibilities, an ear-splitting wail fills the room.
Chapter 25 Summary
The younger friends panic, but Sam realizes that the noise is just the fire alarm going off. Claire rushes to the kitchen: The dinner she put in the oven has burned to a crisp because she forgot to turn it. She knows her mother will be angry. Sam suddenly feels like they are being watched and Claire is again overcome with the feeling that something is missing. The room grows icy cold, and Emily hears scratching in the walls. Claire’s phone starts buzzing as she receives dozens of texts from the number 396. They all read “WHERE ARE THEY” (150). Water pours down the stairs. They all sprint upstairs and find that Sam and Claire’s parents’ bathroom is flooding. The bathtub is filled with her dad’s research papers. When Claire fishes one out, it is blank except for the word Eastland.
Chapter 26 Summary
Claire, Casley, Sam, and Emily try to clean up the water. Claire wonders if the ghost boy could be a victim of the SS Eastland disaster. She tells Casley and Emily to leave so they do not all get in trouble when Claire’s parents get home. Casley and Emily reluctantly agree. Before she leaves, Emily gives Claire one of her silver charm bracelets. The charm is a reminder that it is okay to be afraid. Emily hopes it will give Claire courage. Claire is touched. Sam is surprised that Claire and Emily are getting along, and Claire realizes that Sam is developing a crush on Emily. She tells Sam that she now believes that the ghost boy died on the SS Eastland. It seems like all the clues he is leaving for them have to do with water. They decide to go to the shipwreck site the next day after school.
Chapter 27 Summary
Claire and Sam’s parents get home and are furious to hear that the house has flooded. Claire also tells them about her wet clothes but her mom says that she put clean clothes in Claire’s dresser that morning and that her clothes were all dry. Claire insists that she is telling the truth. Her dad calls her and Sam up to the bathroom, which is also completely dry. Claire is shocked. Her parents ask her and Sam why they made up a story and the siblings do not know what to say. Their parents ground them until they are ready to talk. Claire’s dad asks her if she is sure there is nothing she wants to talk about. Once again, she worries that he will use the ghost for his new book. She stays silent.
Chapter 28 Summary
That night, Sam finds Claire sleeping in her closet again. He wishes she would tell their dad the truth; things are getting scary, and they could use the extra help. Claire wonders how the ghost could have made them believe the bathroom was flooding, and Sam hypothesizes that he only wants certain people to know that he is there. To test this theory, the siblings check their bathroom and find that the number on the wall has disappeared. Claire worries that this means that the ghost is targeting them, but Sam believes that like Claire, the ghost does not trust their parents. Although they are grounded, they still plan to visit the site of the Eastland disaster after school the next day. Claire wishes that her parents would trust and understand her. If her father would stop forcing her to listen to his ghost stories, she might feel comfortable telling him about the ghost boy.
Chapter 29 Summary
On the way to school the next day, Claire thinks about the Eastland disaster and how horrible it must have been to drown. When she gets to school, she finds that her locker has been blocked off with caution tape. She learns that she has been temporarily reassigned a new locker because her usual one had to be fumigated for cockroaches. Her new locker number is 396.
Chapter 30 Summary
Claire goes to her new locker, which is right next to Warner’s. They start talking and he helps her open the lock. Claire is pleasantly surprised that he seems to want to talk to her. Warner admits that he overheard her fight with Casley and Emily the other day and is relieved to hear that all is now resolved. He reveals that Emily is his cousin and has been living with him and his family for a while. Claire shares that Emily has told her about her parents’ divorce. Warner is glad that his cousin has friends she can rely on. He asks Claire to work on a history project with him because they are both writing about Dexter Graves. Claire is surprised that Warner knows about Dexter Graves in the first place but agrees to work with him that weekend. She promises that, with her expertise, they will get an “A” on the project.
Chapters 23-30 Analysis
This section of the novel focuses increasingly on the supernatural problem-solving momentum of the mystery plot. As the emotional problems of earlier sections are largely resolved, the novel—and the characters—are now free to put their energies into overcoming the obstacles of the mystery. Through shared intelligence and communication, the friends make progress with their project, and the narrative follows the twists and turns of their procedure. This section also develops the incipiently romantic relationship between Claire and Warner, helping the book to explore the ways in which mid-adolescence interactions involve proto-sexual elements.
Claire, Casley, Emily, and Sam all spend quite a long time trying to figure out who the ghost haunting Claire might be. For the tension of the story to work, Uncovering the Real Story has to take just a bit more time, but solving this mystery would actually be very easy for them at this point. For example, a Google search such as “boy 396 Chicago” would immediately answer all of their questions and provide them with the ghost’s identity, especially now that they know that he died on the SS Eastland. The revelation that the boy drowned explains the constant presence of water every time the ghost haunts Claire. Now that they are close to figuring things out, Sam and Claire realize that solving the mystery is more important than obeying their parents, which is why they are willing to ignore the fact that they are grounded and visit the Eastland site after school.
These chapters provide a number of clues for the reader, many of which are factual, encouraging the reader to do their own research and solve the mystery. For instance, Claire identifies the ghost boy’s clothes as knickerbockers: The real boy who is featured as the ghost in this story did die wearing knickerbockers, and his grandmother identified him by recognizing them. These clues set up the last section of the book, which will provide more information about the real identity of the ghost. The novel also encourages the reader’s interest in Chicago’s early settler Dexter Graves as Claire and Warner briefly talk about him and their mutual interest forms a bond. Graves was a settler who helped several families move to Chicago from Ohio. He is most famous for his unusual grave monument, a statue called Eternal Silence that is located in Chicago’s Graceland cemetery. Claire tells Warner that she is more interested in who Graves was in his life than she is in his death monument, but, in fact, relatively little is known about him.
In a big departure from earlier sections of the book, Claire is no longer Feeling Left Behind in her friendship with Casley. The girls have resolved their differences, and Claire has even gained a new friend in Emily. However, despite Claire’s progress, this theme has not yet been entirely resolved. Whenever the ghost haunts Claire, she gets a strong sense that there is something missing, and the ghost keeps asking, “Where are they?” (119, 150). Though Claire does not yet know his whole story, she gets the sense that the ghost was left behind or that he has lost something very important. As Claire’s father has already noted, ghosts are usually restless spirits of people whose deaths left them confused or afraid. Claire’s determination to solve this mystery shows that although she is afraid, she is still able to extend compassion to the ghost of the little boy.
Claire has come a long way in her journey of Overcoming Fear. Having friends around her makes it easier for her to respond to the ghost’s haunting presence without panicking. Still, when things get tough, like when the fire alarm goes off and the bathroom floods, all of the kids are afraid. The fear of the ghost is compounded by the fear of getting into trouble. Casley and Emily prove that they are good friends when they do their best to help Sam and Claire clean up the water, but even their help cannot keep the siblings from getting grounded. Emily gives Claire a charm bracelet and a very important piece of advice: She says that it is okay to be afraid. Claire has spent most of the story so far trying to hide her fears from others and trying to resolve her problems alone. Recognizing that there is nothing shameful about being afraid allows her to accept her own feelings. Her previous emotional development is cemented in this section, showing that she is able to consolidate her new friendship with Emily and even explore a potentially scary new kind of relationship with Warner.
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