Little Fires Everywhere: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

Two weeks after the hearing, “it [is] clear that Mr. Richardson [is] not the only conflicted party.” The judge has still not made a decision in the case.

Lexie is due for a follow-up appointment at the clinic, and asks Mia to accompany her. Mia is surprised, but Pearl feels that there has been a reversal between herself and Lexie ever since Lexie’s abortion. After staying over, Lexie went home in one of Pearl’s t-shirt, and Pearl wound up in possession of the shirt Lexie had worn to the clinic; the shirts are like a spell, and Pearl now feels that she has some of Lexie’s confidence. She uses that confidence, even once the shirts are switched back days later, to invite Trip over to her house after school one afternoon while her mother works an extra shift at the Lucky Palace. Pearl tells Moody that she will be “helping her mother” with a project all afternoon, and she and Trip go back to the house on Winslow together. Pearl is thrilled to “lie down with [Trip] in a place of her own choosing.”

Back at school, Tim Michaels confronts Moody, asking if he knows who his older brother’s “mystery girl” is. Moody returns home and finds Izzy there—she tells him that Mia is working at Lucky Palace, despite Pearl having told him that they were working together on a photography project at home. Moody becomes suspicious, and rides his bike over to Pearl’s house. He sees Trip’s car parked on the street, and then spots him and Pearl leaving the house together, holding hands. Moody rides home, upset and embarrassed. All of his fury is directed at Pearl.

Pearl, later that afternoon, goes to the Richardsons’ to talk to Moody. She attempts to apologize, but Moody is acidic and cruel, and tells Pearl that she is a “slut” who is only being used by Trip. Angry and hurt, Pearl tells Moody that she was the one who seduced Trip, and says “at least someone wants [her].” Moody begins to cry, and tells Pearl that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. As a result, the two of them stop talking altogether. They walk to school separately the next morning, and during algebra Moody peeks into Pearl’s backpack while she is in the bathroom, only to find that she has never even opened the notebook he gave her. He steals it back, brings it home, and rips the pages out into the trash. In the next few days, she does not notice it has gone missing, and “this hurt[s] him most of all.”

Lexie is having “romantic troubles of her own.” She has been “skittish” about sleeping with Brian in the wake of her abortion, and has not told him about the procedure. When he confronts her, they bicker, and Lexie tells him that she wants space—since they are heading to two different colleges, she says, things are “better this way.” Lexie, distraught and dazed, walks to the house on Winslow. She finds Izzy and Mia sitting at the kitchen table, and she sits with them and tells them that she and Brian have broken up. Mia makes tea, and Izzy comforts her in her own way—by helping her fold an origami crane.

The judge is still unable to make a decision, and Mrs. Richardson, visiting Mrs. McCullough at her home, asks if there is “anything else” she can think to tell the judge that might sway the case in her favor. Mrs. McCullough mentions that she thought Bebe looked pregnant a few months ago—she had gained weight and had thrown up on a visit with the social worker and May Ling—and then had suddenly seemed thinner a couple weeks later. Mrs. McCullough and Mrs. Richardson wonder if Bebe became pregnant and had an abortion—a scoop that would “turn public opinion against her,” effectively putting a nail in her coffin and ending the case entirely. Though Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. McCullough don’t know it, the narrator says, Bebe had gained weight from stress eating and then contracted food poisoning, losing all the excess weight she’d accrued.

Mrs. Richardson, telling herself that she wants to help Mrs. McCullough win the case, begins “searching for evidence.” She contacts one of her old college roommates Elizabeth Manwill, who now works at the only clinic in town that provides abortions. She asks Elizabeth if she can take a look at the clinic’s records to search for a specific person and Elizabeth, offended, refuses. Mrs. Richardson, thinking that Elizabeth “owe[s] her a great deal” since Mrs. Richardson had helped to “transform” her into a great beauty in college, and had also introduced her to her husband, suggests that she and Elizabeth go out on a lunch date—she implies to Elizabeth that if she came to pick Elizabeth up to take her out and “just happened” to catch sight of the appointment records, Elizabeth would not have to do anything at all other than stand by. Elizabeth begrudgingly agrees.