Friendship is a difficult subject for Jade: since starting at St. Francis, a private high school, two years ago, she hasn’t made any close friends at school. Though Jade isn’t bullied, she feels as though she’s incompatible with the majority of her classmates, and instead spends most of her free time with kids she grew up with, such as her best friend Lee Lee and Lee Lee’s cousins. This all begins to change when a girl named Sam starts at St. Francis, as she, like Jade, takes the bus to school from the opposite side of the city. As the girls’ friendship develops—and, for a time, falls apart—Jade begins to discover that friendship isn’t just about having things in common. The book demonstrates that although similarities may be a precursor to friendship, true friendships only grow when people demonstrate that they’re open, curious, empathetic, and willing to stand up for their friends as needed.
Sam and Jade bond immediately over their shared experience of poverty. In a school where most students’ families pay thousands of dollars in tuition, most students drive themselves to school, and many go out to lunch every day in addition to extravagant excursions every weekend, it’s a relief for Sam and Jade that they’ll both be eating free lunch in the cafeteria. And it’s not just the companionship that makes this attractive: it’s the fact that both girls understand what it’s like to get a full meal at school after what was probably a minimal (at best) breakfast at home and possibly some midmorning candy out of a teacher’s candy dish. Especially when considered alongside Jade’s friendship with Lee Lee, this suggests clearly that friendships arise when people share important, defining experiences or qualities. Sam and Jade share their poverty, while Jade and Lee Lee share being black and growing up in a neighborhood that many people consider to be a “ghetto.”
Things begin to go downhill between Sam and Jade thanks to two events: an incident of racism directed at Jade that happens while the girls are at the mall together, and Sam’s nomination for the Costa Rica service trip at school. While at a store at the mall, a clerk asks Jade—who can’t fit into any of the clothes or afford to buy anything—to check her backpack at the counter and then orders Jade to leave when she refuses. Jade is one of several women at the store with a large bag, but she’s the only black person, and Jade recognizes that this is the only reason the clerk treats her this way. However, Sam, who is white, suggests that the clerk was just doing her job, thereby invalidating Jade’s experience and making Jade feel as though Sam will never be able to empathize with her. This begins to poison Jade’s thoughts about Sam and makes it even more hurtful when Sam is nominated to go to Costa Rica and Jade isn’t—especially since Jade has worked so hard with the goal of going on the trip. The girls stop talking to each other once Sam leaves for Costa Rica, and for a time, Jade believes that their friendship is over. However, Lee Lee points out to Jade that she doesn’t usually give people many chances to do better—and that Sam won’t know what “better” means if Jade doesn’t say anything. While this certainly doesn’t excuse Sam’s dismissal of the racism Jade experienced, it does suggest that friends have a responsibility to speak up for what they need in their friendships. Indeed, when Jade finally does talk to Sam in Spanish class one day, Sam admits that she doesn’t know how to talk about racism like what Jade experienced. Sam clearly didn’t behave the way she did with the express purpose of hurting Jade—and when Jade points out where Sam went wrong, Sam apologizes without making excuses and she promises to do better in the future. This, the novel suggests, is a best-case scenario, as it’s one that gives the girls practice in resolving conflict and helps them develop empathy, two things that the novel insists are necessary to a successful friendship.
Though a much more formal relationship in many ways, Jade’s relationship with Maxine (her mentor at the Woman to Woman program) also becomes a friendship as the two young women gradually open up, reaffirm their commitments, and start to listen more carefully to each other. At first, Maxine doesn’t seem to take the program seriously. She blows Jade off on several occasions, spends her time on her phone dealing with a messy breakup, and is uninterested in actually listening to what Jade wants and needs from their relationship—that is, a person who relates to her and can show her how to navigate the world as a successful black woman. Like Jade’s conflict with Sam, Jade writes Maxine off at several points. However, after Lee Lee’s pep talk, Jade works up the courage to call Maxine out on her bad behavior and asks for what she needs out of their relationship—and doing this allows Maxine and Jade to form an understanding with the potential to blossom into a real, supportive friendship over the course of the two-year program.
Through the trajectories of Jade’s friendships with both Sam and Maxine, the novel makes it clear that it’s easy to begin friendships with people who share important similarities, but that’s not what keeps friendships strong. Rather, friendships continue and thrive when friends are able to forgive each other for their mistakes, ask for what they need, and develop empathy for and understanding of each other’s situations.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Friendship ThemeTracker
Friendship Quotes in Piecing Me Together
And then so many of my classmates nodded, like they could all relate. I actually looked across the room at the only other black girl in the class, and she was raising her hand, saying, “She took my answer,” and so I knew we’d probably never make eye contact about anything. And I realized how different I am from everyone else at St. Francis. Not only because I’m black and almost everyone else is white, but because their mothers are the kind of people who hire housekeepers, and my mother is the kind of person who works as one.
And the other girl talks so bad about Northeast Portland, not knowing she is talking about Sam’s neighborhood. Not knowing you shouldn’t ever talk about a place like it’s unlivable when you know someone, somewhere lives there. She goes on and on about how dangerous it used to be, how the houses are small, how it’s supposed to be the new cool place, but in her opinion, “it’s just a polished ghetto.” She says, “God, I’d be so depressed if I lived there.”
Maxine is full of ideas. “There are lots of free things too. I mean, even taking a drive to Multnomah Falls or going to Bonneville Dam.”
“Yeah, well, my mom doesn’t have a car, so there goes that idea,” I say. “And if she did, I’m sure she’d need to be conservative on where to drive in order to keep gas in the car.”
Maxine shakes her head at me. “Always the pessimist,” she says, laughing.
Always the realist, I think. Always the poorest.
“Kira—please leave Jade alone. She is not like that. She’s smart. She’s on scholarship at St. Francis and has a four-point-oh GPA. This girl right here is going places. She’s not going to mess things up by betting caught up with some guy,” she says. “I’m going to see to it she doesn’t end up like one of those girls.”
I know when Maxine says those girls, she is talking about the girls who go to Northside.
I haven’t spent much time with Sam. Partly because I usually have something to do after school, but mostly because I don’t know how to be around her when I know she doesn’t think that salesclerk treated me wrong. I don’t even think she feels the tension between us. She has moved on and acts like everything is fine, but me? I’m stuck wondering if I can truly be friends with someone who doesn’t understand what I go through, how I feel.
Everyone is so excited about Nathan’s announcement that the family check-in stops, and all Mrs. Winters can do is make plans for the baby shower. No one asks Maxine if she has any news. I can tell Maxine is hurt by this. Because when Mia says, “We should paint a mural in the baby’s nursery. That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it, Maxine?” Maxine says, “Yeah, sure. That would be awesome,” but her voice is flat and without emotion.
I stare at the picture, can’t stop looking at her face, at how she looks like someone who lives in my neighborhood. Maybe she used to?
Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh [...] and not be told I’m too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulous clouds without getting any special attention [...] At school I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black. All day I am on. And that’s why sometimes after school, I don’t want to talk to Sam or go to her house, because her house is a reminder of how black I am.
“I just want to be normal. I just want a teacher to look at me and think I’m worth a trip to Costa Rica. Not just that I need help but that I can help someone else.”
“When I went to St. Francis, most people assumed that because I was black, I must be on scholarship.”
“I’m on scholarship,” I remind her.
“I know. But you were awarded a scholarship because you are smart, not because you are black,” Maxine says. “I got tired of people assuming things about me without getting to know me. [...] Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked on to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says.
