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3. Skitter Hitter
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Look Both Ways, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Perspective and Assumptions
Independence, Freedom, and Identity
Joy, Resilience, and Childhood
Fear, Friendship, and Support
Bullying
Summary
Analysis
On her way home from school, Fatima Moss only speaks to one person. She also keeps a checklist of all the things that stay the same, or that have changed, on her journey home.
Fatima’s list of things that change may help her to look at things in different ways. It’s a way for her to feel more in control of her environment.
Active
Themes
The checklist begins with the bell ringing for five seconds and the 29 students who rush out of Ms. Broome’s classroom. Today, Trista and Bit hurry ahead of everyone else. Fatima follows her classmates into the hallway that’s so noisy she can’t hear herself think. It takes her two tries to open her locker, where she keeps this notebook (writing in the notebook helps Fatima hear herself think). Unlike usual, Fatima has homework today: Ms. Broome wants students to imagine themselves as objects.
Fatima doesn’t know why Trista and Bit are in such a hurry, but readers do: they’re on their way to procure ice cream for Ms. Burns. Fatima doesn’t express any emotion or judgment about this because she doesn’t have any backstory. The fact that Fatima mentions not being able to hear herself think suggests that she feels somewhat out of control in the noisy hallway, as though she’s not totally in control of her thoughts unless she has the notebook.
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Themes
Then, Fatima walks the 81 steps to the open double doors, where Ms. Wockley is, as usual, yelling at Simeon Cross for running with Kenzi Thompson on his back. There are the normal six school buses and two lines of cars in the parking lot, and after about 84 steps to the corner, the crossing guard, Ms. Post, greets Fatima. Her son, Canton, is sitting at the stop sign with a broom with no broomstick—which is weird, but not abnormal because he’s always there with his broom. Fatima continues straight, not crossing the street, and walks slowly. She counts the signs, hydrants, big cracks in the sidewalk, and the houses. Fatima’s house is the 20th, and she’s certain it’s the same as all the others: boxy, beige carpet, and big windows.
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Themes
Fatima reaches the first sign, which is a school crossing sign. The icon on it is an adult and a child, which is odd, since kids cross alone. Fatima looks both ways, notices the one-way and speed limit signs, and counts the stop signs at the end of each block. Each block has five houses on it, and Fatima knows none of the residents. Maybe they count her every day, and maybe the houses are empty like hers—people have to work to pay for the fancy houses and the green lawns. One difference today is that someone clearly snatched some roses out of the eighth house’s yard. Fatima has counted six big cracks and has perfected the art of looking up and down at the same time. She meets Benni at the usual spot, and Benni is doing what she always does: singing.
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The list pauses as the narrator explains how Benni and Fatima met on the first day of school. Fatima’s parents had told her to walk straight down Portal Avenue, speaking to no one and looking up the whole way—which is why Fatima tripped on a big crack and fell. She fell and skinned her knees just as a school bus pulled up to the stop sign and kids lowered the windows to tease her for falling. Fatima noticed one boy on the bus who held a notebook in front of his face and was very clearly not laughing. Just as she got up and the bus pulled away, Fatima heard a deep voice singing. The voice was coming from a woman—Benni—who was singing and dancing down the street. Fatima was nervous and flinched when Benni shouted, “Get ready!” at her. Fatima’s flinch stopped Benni in her tracks.
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Themes
When Fatima’s parents got home from work that night, Fatima had already cleaned and bandaged her knees. Fatima told Fatima’s mom that she tripped and kids laughed at her, but she didn’t mention Benni—if her parents heard about Benni, they might not let Fatima walk anymore. And a difficult walk, Fatima reasons, is worth it to be home by herself in the afternoons instead of with a bunch of other whiny kids and a babysitter. Home alone, she can pretend to be a flight attendant like Fatima’s dad, running through the pre-flight safety presentation that she’s had memorized since she was little.
So, Fatima took Fatima’s mom’s advice to look both ways and “all ways,” even down, to heart the next afternoon. She looked at the ground with such concentration that she didn’t notice the clouds gathering until they started to pour rain on her. Again, the kids on the school bus—except for the boy with the notebook—laughed at her. And again, Benni came dancing and singing toward Fatima, this time wearing a tuxedo and carrying a closed umbrella. Benni extended the umbrella to Fatima and asked if she played the guitar. Fatima was confused, but she took the umbrella, opened it, and kept walking. Benni walked along beside her, encouraging her to keep playing her guitar solo.
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Themes
That night at dinner, Fatima’s mom, an environmental scientist, told Fatima that no big things change: houses stay the same and the cracks won’t move. Fatima’s dad said that “Routine lessens risk,” which spoke to Fatima. She needed the walk to be safe and predictable, so she thought of the boy with the notebook. The notebook seemed to make the boy less exposed, so Fatima decided to start her own notebook, in which to observe the things that change and the things that stay the same. She’s doing just what her mom does with her science experiments. Benni has been exactly the same since then, in that she’s wearing and singing something different every day.
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Themes
Returning to the list, Fatima writes that Benni is wearing a black wig, a blue dress, and boots, and she’s singing a new song and performing different dance moves. Benni calls Fatima “Fatima the dreamer,” and says she saw a school bus fall from the sky (which is typical of Benni). When Benni asks what’s different today, Fatima tells her about Trista and Bit, about her homework, and about Ms. Broome’s writing assignment. She points to the missing roses, half expecting Benni to pull the roses from behind her back to use as a microphone.
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Themes
Benni nods—and then starts mumbling, and then screaming, “But how you gon’ change the world?” Fatima ignores Benni and walks for several more blocks. She ignores the passing school bus too (she doesn’t want to know if anyone is laughing at her or Benni), and Fatima can barely hear herself think. Benni usually leaves Fatima at house 15, but today, she leans on a stop sign and asks again how Fatima is going to change the world. Fatima looks both ways and considers Ms. Broome’s assignment. Could she change the world by becoming cement to fill the sidewalk’s cracks so nobody trips, or by becoming an umbrella to keep someone dry? Fatima doesn’t think those things would do much, so she says she doesn’t know how to change the world. Then, she asks Benni if she could borrow an instrument.
