Beautiful Boy: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Karen has a small cabin in the diverse and friendly town of Inverness, about an hour north of their home. Nic and David enjoy the water, and Nic quickly picks up surfing. He and David love spending time together when the swell is up. David and Karen decide to build a house and painting studio in the Inverness hillside, moving in before Nic begins sixth grade at a new school.

After Nic’s first day at school, he relays that he likes it. He says that the teachers seem nice and that he made a friend who remembered him from when he visited the school. Each day, Nic gains more confidence and friends; he starts talking to a girl named Skye on the phone at night. Karen and David attend the school’s art shows and plays, in which Nic often participates.

Every Wednesday, Nic, Karen, and David go to Karen’s parents’ house for dinner. Nancy and Don live within driving distance of all three of their children, and they are a very close family. Don is a retired doctor who now evaluates the effectiveness of new medicines, and Nancy works every day in the garden. At these dinners, Nancy often reports news of children’s deaths in the area, mostly as cautionary tales.

At one of these dinners in October 1993—when Nic is 11 and Karen is seven months pregnant—Nancy tells the story of a 12-year-old girl named Polly Klaas who was abducted from her bedroom in a town a half hour from Inverness. The police arrest a man soon after, and he leads the police to her body. Nic’s friends become obsessed with the murder. David worries about the effect that this has on them, but there is no way to tune out these horrific stories.

Jasper is born in early December. Nic seems to like playing with him, but David knows that it is complicated for him, wondering where Nic fits into the new family. Still, not much changes afterward. David and Nic surf and play guitars together. On New Year’s Eve of 1993, they go to a Nirvana concert for an unforgettable evening. But three months later, Nic comes home distressed, announcing that Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head.

After summer, Nic begins seventh grade, and David worries about the new perils of being a teenager that Nic is experiencing. In 1940, top disciplinary items for public school teachers included talking out of turn, chewing gum, running in the halls, and dress code violations. Now, they are drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, and robbery. When Nic enters seventh grade, he finds a new advantage of a baby in the family: the girls in his grade love coming over to play with Jasper. Nic also starts spending free time with a group of boys with buzzed hair and skateboards. They talk about music and girls.

One day, in early May, David picks Nic up after school and smells smoke on his clothes. Nic says that he was hanging out with kids who were smoking and admits that he had a few puffs. David lectures him, and Nic promises not to do it again. The next Friday, Nic and a friend are playing football at their house before a sleepover. David is packing a bag for Nic and looks for a sweater in Nic’s backpack. Instead, he finds a small bag of marijuana.