Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything, Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Trust and Lies
Family, Abuse, and Bravery
The Value of Experience
Summary
Analysis
Carla screams, pulls Maddy into a crushing hug, and asks if she’s a ghost. Maddy apologizes for making Carla lose her job, but Carla insists that she’s fine and just misses Maddy. Carla greets Olly too, and invites them inside. She fixes Maddy with a nurse’s stare and asks Maddy how she’s feeling. Olly mentions the pills and Maddy admits that Mom doesn’t know about them. Carla looks at Maddy in a way that conveys she doesn’t believe any of it, but Maddy silently begs her to not expose her lie. Carla doesn’t, and starts making breakfast. Maddy looks around the bright living room, worried that Olly will be able to sense her lies. When she comes across a framed photo of Carla and baby Rosa, Maddy feels she’ll never be able to repay Carla for what she’s done.
Maddy’s sense that she’ll never be able to repay Carla shows again that in important ways, Carla functioned as more of a parent to Maddy than Mom did in that she gave Maddy a safe person to confide in, trust, and test boundaries as needed. This is exactly why Maddy feels comfortable visiting Carla before heading out, as she trusts that Carla is going to allow her to make these choices for herself, like any other 18-year-old.
Themes
Carla makes chilaquiles, but Maddy is too nervous to eat much. Olly asks if Carla thinks the pills are working. Carla says it’s possible, but it’s also possible that the pills are merely delaying Maddy’s sickness—or that Maddy just hasn’t encountered a trigger yet. Olly remains optimistic. Maddy follows Carla into the kitchen. Carla says she understands what Maddy is doing. She says that she left Mexico with nothing and didn’t think she’d survive, but she’d decided that she was going to control her life. Carla admits that she’s never felt freer than the night she left her house, but she does regret things. She wasn’t able to go home for her parents’ funerals, and Rosa knows nothing of Mexico. However, she suggests that regretting is part of living. Maddy thinks of Mom all alone and then pushes the thoughts away.
It’s important to keep Carla’s advice that regretting is part of living in mind going forward, as it should suggest to Maddy that there’s guaranteed to be something about these choices she’s making that she’ll regret—but that doesn’t mean Maddy shouldn’t still go to Hawaii. In essence, it encourages Maddy to take responsibility for her choices and forces her to understand that she can’t please everyone as she grows and comes of age. Someone will always take offense to her choices, but if those choices seem right for Maddy, she should still make them anyway.
Themes
