Kerry Character Analysis in Reckoning

Kerry is Magda’s best friend and secret crush in middle school. The girls kiss each other as practice for kissing boys. When Kerry wants to make Magda over like a “Sharpie”—members of the cool, rebellious crowd at their school—Magda complies, wanting to please Kerry. After Magda and Kerry get in a car crash, they drift apart.

Kerry Quotes in Reckoning

The Reckoning quotes below are all either spoken by Kerry or refer to Kerry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

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I both wanted and didn’t want Kerry to know how I felt about her. I wanted to kiss her […] but I was afraid she would think I was the most reviled and despised thing: a lezzo. My tender feelings were like a jammed signal, unable to escape my furiously beating heart. I was paralyzed, like a hysterical mute, wanting to tell her but desperate to hide my true nature. So it was that the moment of my gay adolescence was delayed at take-off and has, I fear, been stuck on the runway ever since.

Related Characters: Magda Szubanski (speaker), Kerry

Page Number and Citation: 124

Explanation and Analysis:

Kerry Character Timeline in Reckoning

The timeline below shows where the character Kerry appears in Reckoning. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Magda and her best friend Kerry listen to the Bowie album repeatedly. Kerry suggests that she and Magda kiss as practice... (full context)

Kerry, who is part of the sharpie gang at Croydon High, decides to transform Magda; she... (full context)

At Kerry’s suggestion, Magda slouches around near some sharpies until they accept her into their gang. At... (full context)

Every weekend, Magda and Kerry walk dangerously along the train tracks to the mall where they look for boys. Although... (full context)

One day, Chris picks Magda and Kerry up from tennis in the family car. Magda and Kerry sit in the back seats... (full context)

Finally, the ambulance arrives. Kerry is not dead, but she’s broken many bones. Magda is taken home and put to... (full context)

...thing. Deep down, Magda knows she does not belong with the sharpies; ever since kissing Kerry, Magda has felt that she is the bad girl, worse even than the sharpies. (full context)

Kerry Character Analysis

Kerry Quotes in Reckoning

Chapter 13: Sharpies Quotes

Kerry Character Timeline in Reckoning