Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Noughts and Crosses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Division, and Tragedy
Awareness and Privilege
Love, Lust, Power, and Violence
Friendship
Youth, Innocence, and Growing Up
Family
Summary
Analysis
It’s only seven in the morning but for the fifth day in a row, Sephy is puking. Finally, she gets up, brushes her teeth, and heads downstairs. Having the flu is so miserable. It’s been five weeks since she was kidnapped. Since then, doctors have poked her and tested her, and the police asked her embarrassing questions about what her kidnappers did to her. It all made Sephy mad. She didn’t tell them much, and she doesn’t want to think about what happened. The kidnapping was bad, but she can’t bear to think of Callum. She still thinks of him all the time.
Sephy is still struggling to process what happened to her—and especially since the experience was so confusing, given her conflicted relationship with Callum, she has no interest in telling anyone what happened. Nobody, she believes, would understand. Instead, Sephy is withdrawing into herself and focusing on what Callum might be up to these days.
Themes
As Sephy makes tea and toast, Minnie comes into the kitchen and asks if Sephy is okay. Minnie observes that Sephy has been vomiting for a few days now, but Sephy isn’t in the mood to talk. Minnie asks when Sephy is ever going to talk about what happened, and Sephy says she never will—and it won’t reflect badly on Minnie, so Minnie should leave her alone. Then, Minnie asks Sephy if she’s pregnant. Sephy stares back and says she can’t be. She runs from the room.
Sephy lashes out at Minnie because historically, Minnie has only approached Sephy when Minnie is afraid that whatever happened to Sephy will negatively affect her. This was the case when Sephy was beaten up for sitting with the noughts, for instance. And it's totally unwelcome when Minnie suggests that Sephy might be pregnant—for Sephy, that’s unthinkable.
Themes
Sephy stares at the pregnancy test, telling herself she won’t know the truth until she uses it. Finally, she follows the instructions and counts to 60. She can’t be pregnant; she’s just sick. But when Sephy looks at the test, the line is so bright she doesn’t even have to pick the test up to see it. What is she going to do?
Being pregnant with Callum’s baby—and having conceived when she was kidnapped—complicates things for Sephy. The “embarrassing questions” she mentioned earlier in the chapter were presumably about whether she was raped, and eventually, people will find out she did have sex—and they may believe she was raped, no matter what Sephy says to contradict that.
Themes
