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Chapters 23-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “Cameron Boxer”
Cam is relieved that the P.A.G. is done. He returns to his gaming lifestyle, his parents are still proud of him, and Jennifer and Tony stop harassing him. While practicing for Rule the World with Chuck and Pavel on voice chat, Chuck suddenly leaves the game, declaring that it’s boring. Cam wonders what Chuck’s problem is. Pavel explains that Chuck loved the P.A.G. and accuses Cam of not being aware of how the people around him feel. Pavel explains that the community service performed by the P.A.G. made people feel good and connected to those around them. Pavel adds that he agrees with Chuck. Cam feels like he doesn’t know his friends anymore. He asks about Rule the World. Pavel is still excited for it, but he doesn’t believe it’s that important. Cam abandons the game early and offers the console to Melody. Melody asks if Cam has used a certain hack for the game to get better at it. He asks why she knows about it. Melody explains that she and Katrina are gaming more without the P.A.G., but that they both miss the organization.
At school, Cam is haunted by the P.A.G. His peers stop him in the hallways to tell him how much they miss the club and what it meant to them. Daphne is upset that Elvis is still missing and hasn’t gotten to enjoy his habitat. Jordan and Kelly sit together at lunch. They’ve called off the vote and decided to be co-presidents, with Jordana acting as treasurer. Jordan explains the P.A.G. showed them the power of cooperation. Many students ask Cam if he’s planning revenge or how he’s doing since the club disbanded. Cam tries to not let on how happy he is now.
While Cam walks to his last class, Xavier pulls him into a broom closet. Cam thinks Xavier is about to beat him up, but instead Xavier gives Cam a handmade and painted salsa bowl. Xavier explains that he never finished things he started until he joined the P.A.G. Xavier made the bowl in art class and decided to gift it to Cam to show his appreciation for the club. Although Xavier’s community service time has been completed, he misses the P.A.G. because it gave him purpose and it made him feel good to contribute to something greater than himself. Cam suggests Xavier try video games, but Xavier replies that it isn’t the same thing.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Dr. LaPierre”
On the page for the P.A.G., a call to action has been posted, asking paggers to unite against Dr. LaPierre, the school principal, and fight for the club. Certain that this is Cameron’s doing, Dr. LaPierre pages Mr. Fanshaw to his office. Mr. Fanshaw assures Dr. LaPierre that he disbanded the P.A.G. and goes to retrieve Cameron.
Dr. LaPierre confronts Cameron about the post. Cameron maintains his innocence. He explains that everyone loved the P.A.G. and that he wasn’t responsible for the website. Dr. LaPierre threatens to talk to Cameron’s parents and leave a mark on Cameron’s permanent record, but Cameron refuses to take responsibility for the page.
When Cameron leaves, Dr. LaPierre wonders what to do next. Dr. LaPierre used to believe Cameron was a slacker, but now he thinks Cameron is a mastermind who has learned how to skillfully avoid responsibility.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Pavel Dysan”
Cam is angry with Pavel and Chuck. Pavel understands Cam’s anger since Cam believed the end of the P.A.G. was going to make it all go away. Cam has been more overbearing than ever about video games and training for Rule the World. He’s made it not fun for Chuck and Pavel.
Four days after the end of the P.A.G. Cam confronts Pavel, accusing Pavel of posting on the webpage. Pavel hasn’t done it and maintains his innocence. He reminds Cam that they already settled this issue, but Cam is convinced that Pavel lied. Pavel reminds Cam that they’ve been friends for years, and he wouldn’t betray Cam.
Cam won’t budge. He thinks Pavel turned the P.A.G. into something huge because he needed more than video games to stimulate his big brain, and he thinks that Pavel intentionally did it to hurt Cam in the process. The two boys almost fight each other, but Pavel walks away, feeling that he’s lost the friendship as well as the P.A.G.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Freeland McBean”
String is back on the football team, and they’re losing in the final minutes of a tense game. Coach brings everyone in for a pep talk before the final play. He informs the players that the town’s freeway exit is set to be demolished this weekend. It’s going to negatively impact the entire town. Coach tells the team to play their hearts out and show what Sycamore has to offer.
Back on the field, String avoids and outruns the opposing team and scores the winning touchdown in the last seconds of the game. The stadium goes wild. The team carries String around and chants his name.
String tries to soak up the glory, but he feels empty inside. String recalls when he and Xavier were in the P.A.G., power washing the side of a daycare center. String noticed the gutters were full of leaves and debris, so Xavier lifted him up and String cleared them out. The next day there was a rainstorm. If the gutters had backed up, the water would’ve leaked into the playroom. String still feels proud every time he passes the center. He realizes he’s sad because he misses the P.A.G.
Once his team puts him down, String bolts out of the stadium, looking for Cam. He finds Chuck and Pavel, who inform him Cam did not come to the game. String tells them they have to revive the P.A.G., and he believes Cam is the only one with the power to do so. Pavel and Chuck tell String the truth about the P.A.G.’s origins, but String doesn’t believe it. He thinks they’re lying and trying to tarnish Cam’s image.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Cameron Boxer”
In the midst of a very successful run at one of his games, Cam suddenly shuts the system down and walks away. It wasn’t the same without Chuck and Pavel. He wonders what’s wrong with himself, abandoning the game at the height of success. Cam realizes that his lifestyle is still in ruins despite the P.A.G.’s disbandment.
Cam also worries about Dr. LaPierre calling his parents. He mulls over whether to keep lying or to come clean about everything. When Cam goes to his parents, they are admiring the new front door. The plywood hasn’t been hauled away yet, and it’s covered in P.A.G. graffiti. Cam asks if he can talk to his parents. He plans to tell them everything in hopes that his honesty would better convince his parents that he really isn’t the one working on the webpage.
Cam asks if his parents are listening. His mom replies that they’re preoccupied with the news of the freeway ramp’s destruction. They’re worried about how to manage their furniture store and what steps to take to prolong the life of the business. Cam realizes that he hasn’t been paying attention to his parents’ struggles. Part of him feels bad, but the other part of him is relieved that his own issues won’t be as important.
Deciding his parents still deserve the truth, Cam resolves to write everything down in a letter. He goes to Melody’s room to snag a sheet of paper. Inside Melody’s desk drawer, Cam finds a page with the access information to the school website written down. He realizes Melody is the one who has been secretly posting to the P.A.G. webpage. He wonders why she’s been doing this since she has nothing to gain from the P.A.G., but she was helping the P.A.G. grow for the sole purpose of making Cam’s life harder.
Angrily, Cam goes to Katrina’s house to find Melody. When he enters Katrina’s room, he sees Melody and Katrina gaming together. Katrina wears a normal headset, but Melody wears a Darth Vader mask that changes her voice. It’s the exact same voice as Evil McKillPeople. He realizes it’s been her all along.
As soon as they leave Katrina’s house, Cam devolves into a screaming fit at Melody. He tells her he knows about her involvement with the P.A.G. webpage and asks what he did to deserve her acts of sabotage, both in the P.A.G. and as Evil McKillPeople.
Melody replies that she’s a second-class citizen in their home and that she’s tired of seeing Cam get away with his slacker lifestyle. She’s upset that she never gets game time on their own console. She wanted the P.A.G. to become a big thing just to anger Cam at first, but she eventually grew to love it as much as everyone else. Cam replies that he never loved it. Melody asks why Cam hated the power he had over most of the school. She thinks she gave him a gift. Cam realizes that, although the P.A.G. is gone, he still has that power, and he plans to use it.
Chapters 23-27 Analysis
These chapters deal primarily with the fallout of the P.A.G.’s disbandment and show the ways the P.A.G. helped many of the key characters grow. Chapters 23 through 27 also develop the themes of The Importance of Community and Contributing to Something Greater by showing the widespread impact of the P.A.G.
Although Cam is happy to be rid of the P.A.G. at the beginning of Chapter 23, he struggles to get away from the people who were impacted by being a part of it. Cam laments that “The P.A.G. haunted me from beyond the grave” (161). When he thinks things have gone back to normal and he is comfortably gaming on the couch online with Chuck and Pavel, Chuck suddenly leaves, declaring the game boring. Pavel explains that “Chuck loved the P.A.G.” (159) and accuses Cam of not thinking “about other people and what makes them tick” (159). Pavel says that video games “didn’t measure up to the stuff we did with the P.A.G.” (160). This moment shows the contrast between the growth experienced by Chuck and Pavel and the lack of growth experienced by Cam. Chuck and Pavel have grown to appreciate the way the P.A.G. shaped their lives and the lives of those they served while Cam only appreciates that he no longer has to deal with the P.A.G.
In addition to Chuck and Pavel, several founding members of the P.A.G. also experience character growth as a result. In Chapter 23, Xavier presents Cam with a bowl he made in art class. Xavier, who is known as a troublemaker and tough guy, admits to having “never finished anything before. Not until the P.A.G. In the P.A.G. we finished everything we started. And when we were done, stuff was different. Not just different. Better” (165). Xavier’s speech and gesture show that the P.A.G. made a positive impact on his life, and he understands the gravity of the work he did with them. Chapter 23 also reveals the positive impact the P.A.G. had on Jordan, Kelly, and the student body president campaign.
When Cam finds Jordan and Kelly sitting together at lunch, Jordan explains that they’ve decided to share the position as president, with Jordana serving as treasurer. He explains, “We were wasting so much energy tearing each other down [...] But in the P.A.G., you showed us the power of cooperation” (162). The resolution to the student body election helps to develop the theme of Cooperation Versus Competition by showing that cooperation is a better route than unhealthy rivalry.
Even String, whose entire reason for joining the P.A.G. was to get back on the football team, laments the loss of the P.A.G. after its termination. In Chapter 26, String is not only back on the football team, but he makes a game-winning touchdown in the final seconds of the game. In a moment when String should feel on top of the world, he observes, “something was missing” (178). Instead of drinking in the glory of his achievement, String recalls his work in the P.A.G., saying he “used to be a part of something off the chain—something that wasn’t just numbers on a scoreboard. The P.A.G. made a difference” (179). Realizing how much the P.A.G. changed his life, String becomes determined to find Cam and fight for the revival of the P.A.G. String’s shift in priorities shows the way the P.A.G. helped him grow as a person and learn to care about things besides football. Strings feelings also communicate the theme of Contributing to Something Greater. String misses the feeling of being part of something bigger than himself that made a difference in their community.
Chapter 26 also communicates the theme of The Importance of Community. Before the final seconds of the game, the football coach gives an impassioned speech about the football team representing their town. He explains that the exit ramp to the town is being demolished this weekend, adding that “A lot of people think it’s going to be the beginning of the end of our way of life” (176). He asks the team to “make a statement on this field [...] that Sycamore is never out of it so long as we believe in ourselves” (176). The coach’s speech about the decline of the town motivates the team to play hard and represent the community of Sycamore for all its worth. The thought of losing their community is a powerful motivator for the team and thoroughly expresses the idea that community is an important thing to maintain.
In addition to developing themes and characters, these chapters also escalate the tension between Cam, Chuck, and Pavel. In Chapter 24, the middle school principal notices that the P.A.G. website has been restored with a message calling former paggers to rise up against the decision to shut down the club. Believing this to be the work of Cam, Dr. LaPierre threatens to call Cam’s parents, suspend Cam, and mark Cam’s permanent record. Cam manages to deflect blame for the moment, but he fears he’ll still face repercussions for the website, despite his innocence. Although Pavel assures Cam that he isn’t behind the website’s activity, Cam refuses to believe Pavel, causing a rift in their already strained friendship. The shattering of the bond between Cam, Chuck, and Pavel is a direct result of the P.A.G. Cam has lost faith in Chuck as Chuck finds more fulfillment in community service than in games, and Cam has lost trust in Pavel as the P.A.G. website returns and gets Cam in trouble.
Chapter 27 is a turning point for Cam, and the chapter develops the theme of Cooperation Versus Competition. Cam’s change becomes evident at the beginning of the chapter when he shuts his game off at the peak of his performance. Though everything is going well and he’s on the verge of defeating Evil McKillPeople’s enemy team, he “thought about the voices that were missing—Pavel’s, Chuck’s—and it just wasn’t good anymore” (182). This is the first instance in which Cam is not completely focused on his gaming. He realizes that it’s only fun if he gets to play with his best friends. Cam’s realization stresses the idea that the fun he derived from gaming came from cooperation not competition because even at the height of victory, Cam couldn’t enjoy the competition without his friends by his side.
Cam is also preoccupied with the potential punishment he faces for the P.A.G.’s website activity. He decides to come clean to his parents about the P.A.G.’s origins in case the principal calls. He believes the truth about the P.A.G. will help him prove his innocence regarding the website. These motivations, though still selfish in nature, show that Cam is growing as a person because he understands the importance of telling the truth. However, Cam’s parents are preoccupied with the freeway exit closure. They’re “struggling to keep a family business afloat [and] putting in fourteen-hour days at work and worrying about where customers were going to come from when the main highway dropped everyone off at the mall” (186). In the midst of this, Cam cannot bring himself to unload his burden on them. Cam’s parents’ worries about their business communicate the theme of The Importance of Community by showing how Cam’s parents’ business is struggling because of the degradation of their community.
Finally, Chapter 27 brings in an important revelation that shifts the course of the rest of the novel. Not only does Cam discover that Melody is the one responsible for the P.A.G.’s website, but he also discovers that she is his nemesis, Evil McKillPeople. Melody as Evil McKillPeople is foreshadowed in her complaints about having to game outside their home and in Chapter 23 when she offers Cam a tip on how to get better at one of the games Evil McKillPeople beats Cam in. With the confrontation that follows this revelation, Melody and Cam come to an understanding about the power of the P.A.G., foreshadowing that the P.A.G. may have one more project in the works.
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