Book Post: "Speak" part 3

I finally finished the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and I can easily say it was a really good book. In my opinion, the best part of the book was when Melinda finally reveals her past to her ex-best friend, Rachel. When Melinda was at the summer party, she got drunk. While she was intoxicated she went somewhere outside by some trees, which is where Andy Evans took advantage of her. Melinda was so wasted that she couldn’t even scream for help. She finally passed out, and when she woke up she knew exactly what he did to her. She didn’t know what to do and so she called the cops. Ever since then she’s been silent, fighting her mind to forget about that terrible night. Melinda took a step forward, she set her insecurity aside to warn and try to convince Rachel that her boyfriend, Andy Evans, was trouble. It showed that even though Rachel hated her and wasn’t her friend anymore, she still had feelings for her. Obviously, Rachel didn’t listen. She later dumped him when he was getting too physical with her at a prom. A couple days later he tried to rape Melinda again for telling Rachel what he did at the party. But the awesome thing was that she screamed to the top of her lungs, she said no. I like that part because Melinda had always been so traumatized for what that guy did to her; from that night she never spoke to anybody, not even her own parents.

But something happened to her in school that changed everything. It could’ve been her “disposable friend”, Heather who came clean to her and told her she was a negative creep who was no fun to be around. It could’ve been all the time she spent alone in the closet or the times she skipped school to go to the mall. It could’ve been the art project she spent the whole year making for Mr. Freeman. Melinda was supposed to draw a tree. But not just any tree, a tree with her feelings and emotions engraved. She failed to do this at first because all she could think about was the “incident”, and she didn’t want to think about that. But along the way she began to trust her art teacher, Mr. Freeman, and the art project was a bit easier than before. Later a girl named Ivy commented on her tree and said nice things about it. She gave Melinda some tips on how to make it better, by that time Melinda wasn’t as silent as she was before. All these things related to the art project gave her the strength she needed to stand up to Andy. And after she did, she completed her tree with no trouble at all.