Intimacy and Growing Up Theme Analysis

Sixteen-year-old Jessie and her female friends are all extremely interested in sex and intimacy. Several of them are becoming sexually active for the first time, while others, including Jessie, fear in-person intimacy and instead turn to the internet for a different kind of intimacy by communicating with others over an instant messaging program. Overwhelmingly, the novel positions this interest in intimacy as something normal and expected of teens, as it signals their budding maturity. It also suggests that as teens come of age, they discover that true intimacy is about more than just close physical contact like kissing or having sex. Rather, it extends to the way that couples fight, comfort each other, and speak about everything from the mundane to the extremely personal.

At the beginning of the novel, Jessie believes she has a clear view of what it means to be intimate: to her, intimacy means sex. Given that Jessie has never had sex before, this distinction makes sense—the thought of being so close and vulnerable with another person is anxiety-inducing, and it seems far more meaningful in the grand scheme of things than other forms of intimacy (which don’t require nakedness) that Jessie is already engaging in. One of those forms of intimacy is in her communication, especially with her friends. She and her friends speak often about close, personal problems—and often about sex, including whether or not to have it. However, the way that Jessie and her new friends in Los Angeles, Dri and Agnes, speak about sex suggests that at least to some of them, sex isn’t really as intimate of an experience as it could be. When Agnes tells Jessie and Dri about her first time having sex, she questions whether it even counts as an actual sexual experience—her partner remembered halfway through that he was saving himself for marriage and so insisted they stop. She also insists that having sex with him in the first place was just a way to get her first experience out of the way, so it was not something that seemed especially intimate. For Agnes, having sex for the first time was about checking a box so she could say she was more adult and experienced; it wasn’t about cultivating intimacy at all—at least not with her partner. When it comes to talking about the experience with her friends, on the other hand, sharing her story is valuable currency as she strengthens and deepens her bonds with Jessie and Dri.

Though sex remains the pinnacle of intimacy in Jessie’s mind, she also begins to see that there are many other ways to cultivate intimacy in her life—and witness it in the lives of others. This happens especially as she begins instant messaging more with Somebody Nobody, or SN, an anonymous boy at school who contacts her and offers to help her navigate the social structure. SN quickly becomes Jessie’s closest confidante and, eventually, her crush. At the same time, Jessie also begins spending time with a classmate named Ethan on whom she has a major crush, and the time they spend hanging out makes it abundantly clear to Jessie that intimacy isn’t just about sex.

Though Jessie’s conversations with SN start out dealing with practical matters, such as who to befriend and what to avoid in the cafeteria, they soon become far more open. Both of them are dealing with the relatively recent death of a close family member (SN lost his sister, while Jessie’s mom died of cancer), and the revelation that both of them count the days since their loved one died helps them decide that they can go deeper and confide in each other about their sad family situations and their grief for who they’ve lost. This eventually leads to a game (the novel’s namesake), in which they ask each other to tell them three things about themselves. The very nature of this game encourages them to dive deeper and deeper into a relationship. Though SN only exists for Jessie online, she nevertheless recognizes that their relationship is far more intimate—if in a different way—than it could be otherwise. Talking virtually gives Jessie the ability to say things without worrying about how she looks while saying them, or about if she’s not “properly” dressed in designer clothes like her other classmates. With Ethan, meanwhile, their hangouts evolve slowly from walks during which they discuss their school projects on T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land to coffee dates at the local Starbucks. On these dates, Jessie begins to feel as though every brush of Ethan’s arm and every look of concern he gives her when she shows up with bruises from bullying attempts are far more intimate than the idea of sex or even her conversations with SN. Being around Ethan—and to a lesser degree, talking to SN—makes her begin to suspect that intimacy is much more about the little things than it is about major milestones like having sex.

These experiences also help Jessie to humanize and understand the intimacy in Dad and her stepmother, Rachel’s, marriage. She’s shocked when she discovers that listening to Dad and Rachel fight and scream at each other feels far more intimate than listening to them have sex—as does catching them one evening on the couch together, looking at what she suspects is a photo album while Rachel cries. These thoughts illustrate Jessie’s broadening understanding of what intimacy means. Ultimately, Jessie realizes that, under the right circumstances, nearly anything anyone does with another person can feel intimate and meaningful, whether or not there’s sexual contact involved.