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59 pages 1 hour read

Karen M. McManus

Nothing More to Tell

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022

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Chapters 10-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “Brynn”

Carly encourages Brynn to collect information about Tripp, Shane, and Charlotte. Brynn learns that Shane’s family owns one of the biggest real estate companies in Boston and the year Mr. Larkin was killed, they made massive donations to both Saint Ambrose and the local police department. Brynn’s Uncle Nick warns her against looking into this murder case or writing about it, because she could upset the community.

Summary: “Tripp, Four Years Ago”

Shane insists on leading the way through the woods even though he’s no good at science. He wants to go to a nearby fire pit, where he promised to meet Charlotte. Tripp says Shane can go alone to meet Charlotte because he’s going to continue collecting leaves. Shane begs Tripp to come with him, but Tripp declines, putting in his headphones and walking in the opposite direction.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Tripp”

Lisa Marie sends more texts to Tripp, which he continues to ignore. He assumes she must be staying with her friend Valerie from high school. Regina encourages Tripp to give his mother another chance and meet her for dinner. Tripp recalls years ago when Lisa Marie left and told him she was “done” with being a mother.

Brynn comes to the bakery to discuss the memorial garden with Tripp. They decide to ask the school groundskeeper for suggestions on which plants to include. Charlotte invites them both to a party.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Brynn”

Brynn goes to her media technology class, which Tripp, Shane, Charlotte, and Colin Jeffries are also in. Brynn is paired with Colin for an assignment, but instead of doing the work, Colin plugs his phone into the projector, showing everyone a video of Don’t Do the Crime with Gunnar Fox on YouTube. In the video, Gunnar discusses “killer kids” who get away with murder and starts talking about “a dead prep school teacher in Massachusetts whose wealthy 13-year-old student left fingerprints on the murder weapon, yet walked away” (99). Although Mr. Larkin and Shane Delgado are not mentioned by name, everyone knows who Gunnar is talking about. Tripp and Charlotte ask Colin to turn it off, as does the teacher, but Tripp and Colin start fighting. Colin calls Shane a murderer. Brynn tries to intervene and gets punched in the face by Colin, then passes out.

Uncle Nick picks Brynn up from school. She convinces him not to tell her parents that she got punched. Uncle Nick points out that clearly, true-crime shows covering Mr. Larkin are upsetting to the community. However, Brynn says Motive is not like Don’t Do the Crime.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Tripp”

Tripp eats dinner with Shane and Ms. Delgado. They have a personal chef who cooks for them. Mr. Delgado is busy talking to lawyers about the Don’t Do the Crime video. Ms. Delgado thanks Tripp for standing up for Shane, and demands that the boys check on Brynn, who took a punch meant for Tripp. The boys both text her. Brynn asks Tripp to accompany her the following day to Mr. Solomon’s house to ask about memorial garden plants.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Tripp”

The next day, Brynn reveals that Mr. Solomon didn’t actually invite her, and she planned on just showing up. They both look forward to giving Ms. Kelso some positive news, because this past week, she’s been distressed. Someone scribbled all over her fliers for Mr. Larkin’s garden memorial and ruined Mr. Larkin’s face with red markers. Tripp and Brynn knock on Mr. Solomon’s door, but there’s no answer. Tripp wants to leave, but Brynn wants to check the backyard. When they do, Mr. Solomon pulls a gun on them, confused about who they are and why they’re here. He appears to be “not all there” (115), and he doesn’t want to talk about a memorial garden for Mr. Larkin. He believes “that son of a bitch got what he deserved” (116). He then goes inside his house and the kids leave.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Brynn”

Brynn reports what Mr. Solomon said to Nadia, Mason, and Ellie. Nadia thinks he must have been confused, but Ellie thinks maybe some people had a secret reason to dislike Mr. Larkin, even if he seemed nice as a teacher. Uncle Nick confirms that Mr. Larkin would sometimes argue with people or yell at them, especially parents of his students, including Ms. Delgado. Before the kids leave for Charlotte’s party, Uncle Nick makes sure there is a designated driver. Nadia says she always is the designated driver.

The party is humungous. Brynn asks Charlotte where Tripp is, and she replies that “he’s having a bad night” (123) and Brynn should avoid him. Charlotte says that Tripp drinks excessively sometimes to cope with the trauma of finding Mr. Larkin’s body, especially when the past is triggered by something in the present—like Mr. Solomon pulling a gun. Mason finds his crush, Geoff, and spends the night talking with him. Brynn goes outside and finds Tripp sitting on a tall fence post, which he dangerously jumps off. Tripp then confesses that in eighth grade he had yelled at her in physical education class because he just “needed” Brynn to hate him and stay away from him. He didn’t actually mean what he said to her. She asks him why he needed her to stay away, but Shane appears and takes Tripp inside, annoyed that Brynn ignored Charlotte’s warning to not talk to Tripp.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Tripp”

Tripp agrees to meet his mother for dinner. She claims she has a way to help him pay for college: be a guest on the true-crime show Don’t Do the Crime with Gunnar Fox. She knows Gunnar and he wants to involve Tripp in the show about Mr. Larkin. Lisa Marie seems to believe Shane really did kill Mr. Larkin and just got off easy because his family is wealthy. Lisa Marie explains that Gunnar is offering to pay Tripp $10,000 to appear on his show, which is almost enough for a year of college, but Tripp declines. Lisa warns Tripp that Gunnar is going to do the show regardless, and he’ll tell Tripp’s story in whatever way he wants if Tripp doesn’t speak for himself. She reminds Tripp that Motive is also looking into the murder, so they’ll tell his story for him too.

Tripp asks his mother if Gunnar also offered her money. She admits that he did. She also admits that, although Tripp didn’t know it before, she was in Sturgis when Mr. Larkin was murdered. She was staying with Valerie for a couple weeks but didn’t contact Tripp. Tripp reiterates he won’t do the show, and leaves.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Brynn”

Lindzi explains that she and Carly got evidence photos from the murder and pulls up a picture of the murder weapon, the rock. Lindzi says that the murderer probably didn’t leave fingerprints because they were wearing gloves in the extremely cold weather of that day. A gloved killer would explain way Shane’s fingerprints were the only one’s found on the rock. The police also found a thin broken silver chain inside Mr. Larkin’s clothes, as if he had been wearing a necklace. Brynn says she never saw him wearing jewelry. Lastly, police found the stolen money in Charlotte’s locker inside a small envelope. In the office, the money was kept inside a larger, turquoise envelope along with a list of donor names. The bigger envelope was not in Charlotte’s locker.

Brynn researches a previous school that Mr. Larkin worked at in Rhode Island. She finds the phone number for the head of the school and leaves a message for him to call her back later. She plans to ask him about Mr. Larkin.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Tripp”

Tripp, Shane, and Charlotte continue to get texts calling them murderers. They thought the messages were from Colin in their media technology class, but they figure he would have stopped harassing them after getting suspended for punching Brynn. Shane’s parents have filed several lawsuits against Gunnar, which they hope will prevent him from doing the show or at least slow him down. Charlotte says she doesn’t like Brynn anymore because she disobeyed her about talking to Tripp on his “bad night.” However, Tripp ignores Charlotte’s critiques and agrees to meet Brynn after school to speak to the new groundskeeper about Mr. Larkin’s garden.

Chapters 10-18 Analysis

This section deepens the theme of The Ethics of True-Crime Media with the introduction of Gunnar’s show and his “Killer Kids” segment. Although Shane seems to be a viable suspect, the chaos that ensues after everyone sees Gunnar’s sensationalized video suggests how media can manipulate suspicion and subsequently damage a person. For Brynn, her work on Motive, though, is different from Gunnar in that the stories told are true. However, this doesn’t mean that she’s immune to doing anything unethical or upsetting. At the beginning of the novel, Brynn seems to think it’s a great idea to investigate her teacher’s death for the show because she already knows some details about the case and it’s a topic that she cares about. However, the deeper she gets into her research, the more she realizes that any type of true-crime reporting is emotionally taxing, especially when you know the victim and all the suspects. Her personal connections interfere with the “objective” stance that journalists are normally expected to take. Brynn’s ethical and safety boundaries become blurred early on, and only continue to disappear. She’s already happy to break into people’s backyards just to ask them about plants.

As the mystery continues to unfold, more suspects are added to the roster of people that Brynn is investigating. At first, the obvious suspects included Tripp, Charlotte, and especially Shane, because they “found” the body in the woods and Shane’s fingerprints were the only ones on the murder weapon. Plus, his family donated large sums to the police department and the school, making it seem like they may have been covering up a crime. In this section, the past version of Tripp reveals that he was not actually with Shane and Charlotte the whole time, making them seem even more suspicious. Brynn also adds Mr. Solomon and other adults who worked at the school to her list of suspects. Previously, she believed Mr. Larkin got along with everyone, but now she’s learned that some people disliked him. However, the mystery will remain unsolved, at least until Brynn and the reader learn of Mr. Larkin’s previous identity and secret goals, which are revealed later in the novel.

At this part of the story, the novel relies heavily on reader expectations of literary mysteries and how they work. Readers expect for their suspicions to evolve over the course of a novel, which occurs as more details come to light about Lisa Marie and Mr. Solomon. Tripp’s behavior throughout this section, particularly manifest in his binge drinking, points to the theme of The Burden of Keeping Secrets. He clearly struggles to emotionally deal with the past trauma, and Charlotte’s warning to Brynn to not speak to him suggests that she’s afraid of what he might say while drunk.

Although the novel does not ultimately discourage the pursuit of knowledge, Brynn and others do entertain the notion that perhaps, sometimes it’s better not to know things and not to go looking for certain knowledge. Brynn ultimately thinks that not knowing can do more damage than knowing, but her pursuit of the truth in this section teaches her that her research methods matter. For example, her dedication to discovering the truth about Mr. Larkin’s murder doesn’t require her to trespass or lie about an internship. She finds that these actions only portray recklessness rather than honesty. This type of “tunnel vision” becomes dangerous and unhelpful. The consequences Brynn faces for not respecting the boundaries of others (a literal door or someone’s trust, for example) lead her to eventually understand the Importance of Teamwork and Honesty. At first, Brynn always wants to work hard, but Tripp teaches her that working smart is usually a better use of time.

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