Everything, Everything follows 18-year-old Maddy Whittier, a precocious and observant teen who also has SCID, a severe autoimmune disorder. Since Maddy’s diagnosis at a few months old, she hasn’t been able to safely leave her purified, sanitized, air-locked house. Maddy’s life, however, is a comfortable one: she spends her days reading and doing homework for her online classes, supervised by her nurse, Carla. In the evenings, she plays games and spends time with her single mom, who is a doctor. Maddy’s condition means that for her, coming of age and growing up aren’t especially interesting or compelling concepts, as she understands that for her safety, her life can’t change in substantial ways as she becomes an adult. Because of this, the novel questions what adulthood looks like for someone like Maddy—and when the questions of boys, romance, and the truth of Maddy’s diagnosis come into question, it suggests that coming of age doesn’t simply mean turning 18 and becoming a legal adult. Rather, coming of age is about developing independence and making one’s own choices about life, even if those choices are difficult, painful, and even hurtful to others.
Maddy’s condition complicates normal coming-of-age milestones by rendering them relatively uneventful for her. She celebrates her 18th birthday early on in the novel, and while this is the age at which people in the U.S. are considered adults, Maddy’s birthday means little to her or to Mom in this sense. Instead, her birthday is a bittersweet day every year, and Mom and Maddy are both aware that she’s lucky to see her 18th birthday—SCID means that Maddy could become seriously ill and die at any moment. Because of this, Maddy says little about her impending life as an adult, even if it’s only as an adult based on age. She gives no real insight throughout the novel into what she might want her life as an adult to look like, as her illness means that in all likelihood, nothing can change. For her safety, she must remain in her sanitary home under Mom and Carla’s watchful eyes. All of this gives the impression that Maddy is a young woman essentially stuck in time. While she may have made the transition already from child to teenager, there’s little indication that she even has the desire to make the transition from teenager to independent adult—perhaps because she is afraid to admit that desire to herself and be let down. The thought of coming of age, in this sense, simply isn’t something Maddy allows herself to think about.
All of this begins to change when a boy named Olly and his family move in next door. Maddy is immediately attracted to Olly, and this attraction brings up a number of important questions for her—namely what, if anything, she will ever do about love and romance. The only people allowed in Maddy’s house on a regular basis are Mom and Carla—anyone else who enters isn’t allowed to even sit next to Maddy, let alone touch her. As these questions about romance and relationships arise, Carla offers what is, for someone like Maddy, a controversial and potentially dangerous view: that desiring romance and falling in love is a normal part of growing up. Because of these convictions, Carla allows Olly to visit regularly and even lets Olly and Maddy hang out with each other without supervision, something that gives Maddy the opportunity to begin to figure out her identity separate from who she is around her mom and Carla. In this sense, Olly is important to Maddy’s journey of self-discovery in terms of more than just romance. He represents Maddy’s first chance to be around someone her own age, and their bond starts to impress upon Maddy the importance—and the fun—of developing friendships and sharing opinions and conversations with new people. Through her interactions with Olly, Maddy is able to better determine who she wants to be and how she wants to act around people.
As Maddy and Olly’s relationship progresses and deepens, Maddy takes a flying leap forward in terms of maturity when she secretly books a trip for her and Olly to Hawaii, a place she’s always dreamed of visiting but where her illness has prevented her from going. In doing this, Maddy asserts her independence from Mom and recognizes that it’s neither healthy nor fulfilling to remain, in practice, a teenager forever. Instead, if she wants to exist in the world as a whole and contributing member of society, she decides that it’s important to experience it as an independent adult—even if it might kill her. The trip to Hawaii is an experience of growth and independence for Maddy in a variety of ways. It’s the first time she’s been on her own, let alone out of the house, and she and Olly also take the very adult step of having sex. However, most important for Maddy’s coming of age is that she becomes suddenly ill—this causes her to discover, a few months after the fact, that she doesn’t have SCID after all. This discovery gives Maddy something she’s never had before, given the fact that Mom has been the one overseeing Maddy’s care since her diagnosis: independence and autonomy over her healthcare decisions. Maddy chooses to pursue testing that reveals that she indeed doesn’t have SCID—Mom gave Maddy a fake diagnosis when she was a baby, a product of the trauma, grief, and desire for control that Mom experienced when she lost Maddy’s dad and brother in a car accident a few months after Maddy’s birth.
Though Maddy’s journey of discovering she doesn’t have SCID represents an extreme example, it does suggest more broadly that an intrinsic and necessary part of coming of age entails declaring one’s independence and questioning some of the things that parents present as fact. Even if doing so is difficult, dangerous, and in this case, damages Maddy’s trust in her mom, the novel makes it clear that it’s impossible and unhealthy for teens to remain dependent on their parents and unthinkingly trusting of them forever.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Coming of Age Quotes in Everything, Everything
This year is a little harder than the previous. Maybe it’s because I’m eighteen now. Technically, I’m an adult. I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome. But because of SCID, I’m not going anywhere.
“Madeline,” He says happily, clapping his hands together. He’s my favorite of all my tutors. He never looks at me pityingly and he loves architecture like I love architecture. If I were going to be something when I grew up, an architect is what I would be.
I wish again that I could talk to my mom about this. I want to ask her why I get breathless when I think of him. I want to share my giddiness with her. I want to tell her all the funny things Olly says. I want to tell her how I can’t make myself stop thinking about him even though I try. I want to ask her if this is the way she felt about Dad at the beginning.
It feels strange not to talk to my mom about something, someone, who’s becoming so important to me. My mom and I are drifting apart, but not because we’re spending less time together. And not because Olly’s replacing her. We’re drifting apart because for the first time in my life, I have a secret to keep.
Before, I was worried about keeping secrets from her. Now, I’m worried about not being able to have any secrets at all. I know she’s not upset that I bought new clothes. She’s upset that I didn’t ask her opinion and bought them in colors that she didn’t expect. She’s upset with the change she didn’t see coming. I resent and understand it at the same time.
“Can I have my Internet privileges back?” I have to try.
She shakes her head. “Ask me for something else, honey.”
“Please, Mom.”
“It’s better this way. I don’t want you to have a broken heart.”
“Love can’t kill me,” I say, parroting Carla’s words.
“That’s not true,” she says. “Whoever told you that?”
Ever since Olly came into my life there’ve been two Maddys: the one who lives through books and doesn’t want to die, and the one who lives and suspects that death will be a small price to pay for it. The first Maddy is surprised at the direction of her thoughts. The second Maddy, the one from the Hawaii photograph? She’s like a god—impervious to cold, famine, disease, natural and man-made disasters. She’s impervious to heartbreak.
The second Maddy knows that this pale half life is not really living.
He’s much too smart to fall for this, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true more than he wants the truth. The smile that breaks across his face is cautious, but so beautiful that I can’t look away. I would lie to him again for that smile.
“Of course I regret it. A lot of bad things happened on that trip. And when my mother and father died, I couldn’t go back for the funerals. Rosa doesn’t know anything about where she’s from.” She sighs. “You’re not living if you’re not regretting.”
What am I going to regret? My mind cycles through visions: my mom alone in my white room wondering where everyone she’s ever loved went. My mom alone in a green field staring down at my grave and my dad’s grave and my brother’s grave. My mom dying all alone in that house.
By eighteen years old, other teenagers have separated from their parents. They leave home, have separate lives, make separate memories. But not me. My mom and I have shared the same closed space and breathed the same filtered air for so long that it’s strange being here without her. It’s strange making memories that don’t include her.
“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”
“You should leave them,” I say. “It’s not safe for you there.”
I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.
“How could you do this to yourself? You could’ve died,” she whispers.
She steps closer, hugs a clipboard to her chest. “How could you do this to me? After everything?”
He’s not sure which conversation with his mom finally convinced her. It could’ve been because he told her he couldn’t be part of the family anymore if she stayed. Sometimes you have to leave the people who love you the most, he said. Or, he says, it could’ve been when he finally told her about me and about how sick I am and how I was willing to do anything just to live. He says that she thinks I’m brave.
“Mom, it’s OK,” I say. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”
I don’t think she hears me. “I had to protect you,” she says.
“I know, Mom.” I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. I move back into her arms.
“I had to protect you,” she says into my hair.
And it’s that last “I had to protect you” that makes a part of me go quiet.
[...]
I try to pull away, to see her face, but she holds on tight.
