The Friendship War

“Sometimes I wonder if Ellie has an extra best friend in Aspen, like a spare tire. And sometimes I think that by the time we make it to June every year, we might just really need our long summer away from each other. With zero communication.” 

These lines come on the first day of school as Grace prepares to meet up with Ellie after having been apart from her all summer. For the last few years, Grace has wondered at these breaks in their communication, and this passage shows her trying to find a logical explanation for why they don’t talk for several weeks every year, despite their supposed status as best friends. Her first theory shows that no explanation should be discounted until it is proven incorrect. It seems unlikely to Grace that Ellie has a secondary best friend in a city where she doesn’t spend much time, but Grace can’t discount this theory just because it’s less likely than other explanations. The second theory—that they need the silence—speaks to the flaws in their relationship, as well as how people change as they grow. Grace is tired of Ellie after an entire school year, and she suspects that Ellie feels the same way about her. For this reason, they take time away from one another over the summers. This theory also foreshadows Grace’s realizations about her friendship with Ellie, as well as how the relationship changes throughout the book.

“I have an old, wide brass bed with a dust ruffle, and twenty-four of the boxes fit underneath.

I stack the last three at the back of my closet, and now all the boxes are tucked away, but not really hidden.”

Here, Grace has just received the shipment of button boxes from her grandpa and has brought them all up to her room. Grace’s room is otherwise full of interesting things that she has collected over the years, and until she has time to sort through the buttons and find the proper places for them, she stores them in places that don’t disrupt the aesthetic of her room but are still part of the space. Her observation that the boxes are out of sight but not hidden is a metaphor for the troubles that Grace faces with Ellie. The problems in the girls’ relationship are out of sight because neither girl chooses to truly look at them, but they are not hidden, as evidenced by Grace’s growing annoyance with Ellie’s behavior.

“And my favorite discovery? Three of the boxes are filled with all the leftover and mismatched and fancy buttons, so many different kinds! There are buttons made of glass, shell, brass, wood, plastic, pewter, leather, and other materials I don’t recognize. I’ve got buttons that look like diamonds and pearls and roses and daisies; buttons in the shape of hearts and triangles and squares and stars and dogs and horses and cats and butterflies and snowflakes—on and on and on!”

In this passage, Grace has started sorting through the boxes of buttons. Most of them are round and sorted by color. The three boxes she describes here are different in that the buttons they hold unique and don’t fit anywhere else. These unique buttons are also the true catalyst for the button fad. While the students find the plain round buttons interesting, they are amazed at the more unique ones and the idea that buttons can come in so many shapes and sizes. This prompts the students to find the most unique buttons they have in their own homes, and all of this comes together into the fad of trading, creating, and playing with the buttons.

“Mrs. Casey asks the class to gather around, and as they do, she picks up the scissors.

My stomach tightens up like a little fist, and I think I might have just made a bad face. Because from now on, whenever I look at those scissors, I’m going to have to remember two things—my wonderful afternoon with Grampa, and Mrs. Casey’s pink fingernail polish.”

This passage introduces another aspect of Grace’s thought processes—her tendency to associate objects with specific moments, people, or events. Up until now, she has categorized all the objects she found at the mill by the experience of her trip to visit her grandfather, and those objects are special because they remind her of the positive associations that she has of the trip. Upon seeing her teacher pick up the shears, the memory associating them only with the mill is tainted by the specific shade of her nail polish because that pink color somehow imprints itself in Grace’s subconscious, creating an association between the object and this moment.

“Instead, I try to estimate how much of the sixth grade had already arrived in the auditorium when Mrs. Lang made me stop counting…probably about two-thirds.

So, if the first two-thirds of the kids were wearing about three hundred and sixty buttons, then the remaining one-third of the kids would be wearing about half that many: another one hundred and eighty. Which means that today, the whole sixth grade is wearing…five hundred and forty buttons. Approximately.”

This passage comes during an assembly on the day that Grace, Ellie, and the other students will share their buttons at lunch. The entire situation has Grace on edge, and this excerpt is an example of how her analytical brain deals with anxiety. Instead of hyper-focusing on the exact event causing the anxiety, Grace obsesses about counting buttons and starts performing complex mathematical equations in her head. Though this may be different from the thoughts that others might experience under the same stress, Grace’s way of worrying is truly no different. Her obsessive and frantic thoughts simply revolve around something other than what she fears will happen, and the way that Clements has structured this scene makes it clear that Grace’s counting is a distraction born of fear.

“‘But every button’s story started way before any of them got to our house, onto our clothes. Because all these buttons had to get designed by somebody, and then each one got made somewhere, right? And then each one got moved around by people and then sewn onto something, or dropped one by one into tiny plastic bags and stuck inside the back pocket of some new pants—right?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben says, ‘except stuff like that happens to everything—like this chair, or my shoes, or that lightbulb. Every single thing in the whole world has a story of how it got made and how it got to be somewhere. And a button is just one other thing.’”

This conversation between Grace and her brother offers additional context to buttons as compared to other objects, and it also establishes Grace’s brother as the person with whom she discusses her ideas. He is also someone who understands her unique way of viewing the world. At its core, this conversation is about how all objects have a story, whether long and complex or short and simplistic. Items are made and sent out into the world with a specific purpose in mind, but once they are away from the facility where they were manufactured, their individual story arcs are out of the creator’s control. From there, an object may be strictly used to serve the purpose it was created to fulfill, or it may completely diverge from that path and become something it was never meant to be. Altogether, the theories Grace and her brother discuss here show how the future is limitless and undefined. Objects, like people, may begin with a specific path before them, but choices and events can change those paths and create unexpected futures.

“It’s Thursday, and I wake up thinking about buttons. Again.

How many do I actually have? Which color do I have the most of? How many of each size do I have? Of all the buttons I have, which has the largest diameter…and the smallest?”

This passage of Grace’s thoughts shows how her analytical and sometimes obsessive thought patterns become integrated with the button phenomenon. Up until this point, Grace has thought that her interest in buttons was just part of her interest in collecting varied things, but after her classmates take an interest, she finds herself thinking about buttons more than she expected. The questions she asks herself here are an indication of her scientific approach to the buttons, for they are designed to help her data collection, which would then allow her to make further observations and measurements to categorize the buttons in the most logical way possible. More broadly, this passage shows how scientific thinking may be applied to anything, even things that seem to have little scientific relevance.

“I hear myself calling out, ‘Who’s got those pewter buttons?’

‘Back here—I’ve got three. Pass these up to her.’

It’s a girl two rows behind me, and I think she’s a fifth grader.

I study the buttons, and then I frown. ‘Oh—they’re not the same. That’s too bad.’

‘Right,’ she says, ‘but they’re all snowflake designs…and every snowflake is different, right? So, they’re still pretty amazing.’”

This exchange between Grace and a girl she doesn’t know takes place on the bus ride to school and follows a trade that Grace just made to get some large green buttons. This passage shows Grace becoming just as consumed by the button trading fad as the other students, abandoning her logic-based approach to study the social phenomenon. This development shows how fads can overtake even those who try to remain objective in the face of such growing excitement. The girl with whom Grace converses here provides an example of the dynamics of a typical button trade, as well as what sorts of arguments can be used to reach an agreement. Grace asks for pewter buttons, but when she gets them, she is disappointed that they aren’t an exact match. To work toward a trade that is more in her favor, she voices her displeasure at this, and the girl’s response shows that she has given this argument thought and has come up with a way to turn the trade back in her favor—by pointing out that the buttons are like real-life snowflakes.

“Following Ellie’s lead, five other girls have some kind of a button bracelet—I think Ellie’s new one is still the best. Three girls have a fancy button or two strung onto a cord or a chain and worn as a necklace. One girl has sewn a bright yellow button onto each belt loop of her jeans! And Taylor? She’s got one little blue button on each of her white sneakers, sewn onto the laces somehow, and centered about halfway up—it’s an interesting look.

In the back corner, four boys have these strange bunches of buttons hanging from their belts. But I wouldn’t call this fashion—more like…advertising.”

This passage shows the next step in the button fad—incorporating buttons into fashion and different displays. Ellie and the other girls have created new objects using the buttons, and some have incorporated the buttons into their clothes in ways that are simply for show, rather than function. This symbolizes how creativity helps to spur on the evolution of an object. This passage also highlights potential differences between girls and boys in terms of showing off buttons. Whereas the girls have made the buttons part of their outfits, the boys have made displays for the buttons, which Grace differentiates by thinking of them as advertisements. The boys’ displays are no less creative. They are simply different, showing that there is no right or wrong way to use buttons.

“She glares at me, and the edges of her nostrils are flared out wide—like a horse that’s about to kick someone’s head off. I’ve seen this look before, but it’s never been aimed at me. I feel like I’m going to shiver, and during that split second I almost hand over Brooke’s button and start apologizing.”

This silent interaction between Grace and Ellie gets to the heart of the conflict between the two girls. This moment shows the possessive side of Ellie, as well as her desire to be the most impressive and the best at everything. When she doesn’t get the pinwheel button, Ellie turns from someone who’s willing to offer others anything they want to someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to get her way, and Grace’s reaction shows how Ellie’s personality affects those around her. Grace has spent the last few years letting Ellie lead her around, never making waves or standing up for what she wants. As a result, Grace has trained herself to appease Ellie because the alternative is enduring Ellie’s anger, which has negative consequences. In this moment, these lessons nearly topple the defenses that Grace has worked to build. She fears what will happen if she angers Ellie, and she is almost desperate to keep in Ellie’s good graces, which shows how people often manipulate others in their rise to power. Ellie intimidates people into pleasing her by making them fear what will happen if she gets mad, and this leads to people feeling like they’ve done something wrong when they haven’t.

“With a math question, an answer is correct or incorrect, true or false. When I ask, Is two plus two four? the answer is, Yes! Two plus two is four!

And that’s the end of it.

These questions about Ellie and me? I don’t see an end.”

These lines come while Grace is questioning her relationships with Ellie, and they offer additional context to the idea that Nothing Lasts Forever. The first paragraph here shows why Grace likes math and science so much—they are reliable. No matter what, a math question will have the same answer every time, and Grace finds comfort in this consistency. By contrast, the questions about Ellie and their relationship don’t have readily available answers. Those questions, to Grace, could go on forever because social dynamics can be far more complicated than mathematics.

“Out in the hallway, just before I headed for math and Hank went toward the gym, he said, ‘I’ve got an idea about where we might find some good buttons to collect, or to trade—whichever. Interested?’

My favorite thing about what Hank said? He used the word we—one of the friendliest words ever.”

This passage with Grace and Hank comes after Ellie bans Grace from her lunch table. Grace has concluded that Ellie often uses “I” or “me” when discussing things—meaning that Ellie puts emphasis on herself and creates the idea that other people are just tagging along in her life. With this realization, Grace feels betrayed and believes that Ellie doesn’t care about her at all. Thus, hearing Hank say “we” fills Grace with warmth because it means he is taking her thoughts and feelings into account. Hank also asks Grace what she thinks and if she’s interested in something, showing that he treats their relationship like one of equals, rather than one in which rank is important.

“Very. Sort of like little graveyards. When a button drops off, you pop it into the graveyard.

That’s way too gloomy Grampa. But yeah, I get that. Still, I’d just call each group a collection.

Collection, final resting place, graveyard—pretty much all the same. Just being accurate, Gracie.”

These lines come from the text message conversation between Grace and her grandpa. The concept of a button “graveyard” highlights the gloomy outlook that Grace’s grandfather still has on life after the death of his wife. Even the simplest things are imbued with connotations of death for him, and Grace’s offhand labeling of this thinking as “gloomy” also implies that she, as his granddaughter, has the power to lift and help regulate his sadder moods. In this way, Grace’s collection metaphor for the buttons is more accurate than a graveyard, because she doesn’t think of buttons going to a place where they will linger, never to be used again. Instead, a button falling off clothing is just the next step in its journey, and this becomes a larger metaphor for death and grief. Grace and her grandpa grieve Grace’s grandmother because they think of her as being gone, but just like a button, she may have just moved on to the next part of her journey.

“I was about twenty years old, and in one of my college courses, the professor asked the whole class to close our eyes and sit very still. Then she asked, ‘Is it possible for you to imagine that the world you’ve known your whole life isn’t there anymore?’ And I decided I could imagine that, no problem. Then she said, ‘Is it possible for you to imagine that your physical body is not sitting in a chair in some classroom, that your body isn’t really anywhere in this world at all?’ And again, that was pretty easy for me to imagine. Then she asked, ‘Is it possible for you to imagine that the part of you that is doing all this imagining could just stop it, and never think anything at all, ever again?’ And after about a minute of sitting there thinking, I decided I could not imagine that—not at all.”

These lines are spoken by Grace’s mother, and they relate to the concept of a button graveyard as a metaphor for death. The questions that the college professor asks are focused on what makes someone alive and aware. The first question speaks to people’s surroundings and whether it’s possible for that world to just disappear. The second question relates to people’s physical presence and whether it could just disappear. After consideration, Grace’s mother decides that she can picture both of these things disappearing, because, ultimately, whether they are there or not does not have an impact on how she defines herself. There is no definitive answer to any of these questions, and they are up to the individual to contemplate the answers in the universal struggle to determine the true nature of being alive and being aware.

“Do I want to compare Hank with Ellie? No.

But it keeps happening.

Which makes me wish I could stop observing my own thinking. Which only makes me think more.”

This passage of Grace’s thoughts is an example of how she feels betrayed by her ability to think logically, seek answers, and arrive at conclusions. Typically, Grace appreciates this part of herself because it allows her to learn new things. In this situation, however, she is not learning anything new. She is only rehashing the questions she has been grappling with about her relationship with Ellie. Comparing Ellie to Hank doesn’t bring Grace any closer to gaining a satisfying answer to her dilemma. Instead, it just makes Grace feel worse about Ellie because Hank has so many more positive qualities. Grace’s tendency to overthink and analyze are her greatest weaknesses here, proving that strengths can also be weaknesses in certain situations.

“Because it’s not like Ellie turned mean all of a sudden. Little bits of meanness have been around for a long time, just not so much out in the open.

Before, I used to laugh when Ellie whispered something about another girl, about how awful her clothes looked, or how someone’s nose was shaped funny, or how some girl talked too loud or said something dumb.

And now the meanness is aimed at me.

So I probably deserve this.”

In this passage, Grace comes to terms with some difficult truths—namely that she went along with Ellie’s meanness and was also mean to people. Up until now, Grace has been unaware of this dynamic, or else she has chosen to ignore it because she has not wanted to examine herself or Ellie too closely. However, now that Ellie has directed her mean behavior at Grace, Grace can no longer ignore who Ellie is and how she treats other people. An aspect of Ellie’s personality is tearing down other people to make herself feel better, and this reflects her own insecurities about who she is. Grace used to play into these insecurities by laughing along with Ellie even when it felt wrong to do so, and as a result, Grace now feels like she deserves to be on the receiving end of Ellie’s meanness, since she helped to enable it so many times in the past.

“‘It’s complicated. It would take all day to explain.’

Hank gives me a look. ‘I figured out how gravitational orbits work. Do you think it’s more complicated than that?’

‘Actually, yes. Figuring out what’s going on between Ellie and me isn’t the same as working math problems. If it were the same, all the wars in the world could be ended in a week!’”

This exchange between Hank and Grace comes after Grace decides to get revenge on Ellie for breaking the pinwheel button and, by extension, their friendship. Hank disapproves of what Grace is doing, but rather than calling her out on it, he strives to understand why she has chosen this path. When Grace says it’s complicated, she really means that she doesn’t want to think about it too much, because if she does, she knows that she will have to admit that her own behavior is wrong. Hank’s comment shows two things—that he is very intelligent and that he doesn’t believe Grace. He also clearly thinks that she’s making things more complicated than they need to be. Hank knows that the best way to fix things between Ellie and Grace is for the two of them to talk, but he doesn’t say as much here because Grace isn’t ready to hear it. Instead, he leaves, letting Grace think that she is accomplishing something worthwhile, all the while knowing that she has to come to the truth on her own.

“It’s partly what you just said, that everybody’s got some, and a lot of kids like trading them. There are so many different kinds, too. But…it’s also that kids keep coming up with new things to do with them—making up games, and making crafty stuff, like bracelets. I heard that some fourth graders have been using wire to make button sculptures. And on the bus home today? I saw this boy, and he’d made a snake by stringing a couple hundred buttons onto a string—tiny buttons at the tail, then gradually larger ones toward the middle, then some different-sized ones to make the head. Kind of creepy, but also cool. And tomorrow button snakes could be all over the place…or little button frogs, or bugs—who knows? Because a spinner does one thing: It spins. Buttons can do anything that a kid can dream up.”

These lines are spoken by Grace’s brother while the two of them work on figuring out why buttons have become so popular amongst their classmates. Grace’s brother touches on the idea that buttons are an object of potential. As discussed in earlier chapters, they are made for a specific purpose, but they have so many potential uses beyond what they were made to do. The creations he describes here are just a few ways that the children have used buttons in unique ways, giving the fad its true staying power. Every day, new uses for buttons could be found, and any one of those uses could be the next big part of the fad, making it more difficult for this fad to end because it keeps getting new life. Unlike one-off objects like the spinners described here, buttons are transformative.

“And as much as I don’t want to be at war with Ellie anymore, if all these problems and all this stupid drama are the price I needed to pay to get to know Hank better? Then I don’t have any regrets.”

This passage of Grace’s thoughts highlights the idea that every bad situation has unforeseen positive consequences. The feud between Grace and Ellie has left Grace feeling terrible, both about how she’s acted and about how Ellie has treated her in the past. At this point in the story, Grace is tired of fighting. She acknowledges that the past few years of her relationship with Ellie have not been ideal, but now she just wants to move on and salvage her relationship with Ellie if she can. Amidst all her negative feelings, however, Grace is glad that she has gotten to know Hank better. He has become a great friend and someone she can rely on, and he has also helped her to see that she can have more than one good friend. Fixing her relationship with Ellie doesn’t mean giving up Hank.

“Well, I finally found the courage to go through your grandmother’s things. Courage might sound like a strange word to choose, but being here in the world on my own again is a new experience, and sometimes it can feel a little scary. However, I’m finding that new experiences seem to be exactly what I need.”

These lines come from the letter Grace’s grandpa writes after he finds some of his wife’s old buttons. After watching Grace face new struggles at school, he has decided to face his own fears, and he has found that doing something different is truly beneficial to the healing process. Prior to this, he was stagnating, using the refurbishment of the mill as a distraction without actually getting involved in the process in a meaningful way. Here, he identifies courage and new experiences as the things he needs to move forward, and this letter is a turning point for Grace as well. Like her grandpa, she understands that truly fixing things with Ellie requires courage—both to try to fix things and to accept that they may not work out how she wants them to. After this moment, Grace must be ready to accept a new turn in her life if she can’t fix her friendship with Ellie, something she has already started to do by getting to know Hank.

“‘So that means I’ve been trading my bracelets to get more of your buttons, and you’ve been trading your buttons to get more of my bracelets!’

We both start laughing again, and then I say, ‘But I was going to crush your bracelets to bits!’ And somehow that seems hilarious now.”

This exchange between Grace and Ellie comes after the girls have made up and have realized how poorly they’ve treated one another. The realization they come to here is another aspect of trends, as well as a symbol of how closed-off feuds can be. The realization that they are using one another’s things to hurt each other makes the entire feud feel ridiculous. Ellie couldn’t have made her jewelry without Grace’s buttons, and Grace couldn’t have collected Ellie’s jewelry if Ellie had not used Grace’s buttons to make it. The feud is circular, both in terms of buttons and emotions. If they had never come to a solution, the same pattern would have continued indefinitely.

“The room gets quiet, but it’s not the same full silence as before. And it makes me wonder if anyone has ever done a scientific study about large groups of children all together in the same room. Because this makes me remember a nature show about bees that Grampa and I watched, and how any little disturbance will go rippling right through a whole beehive.”

This passage comes after the principal has announced the button ban and the events that precipitated it (Grace leaving the buttons scattered in the schoolyard). Grace’s thoughts recall her earlier anxiety over sharing buttons at lunch in Chapter 6. At that point, she feverishly counted buttons as a distraction from her anxiety. Here, she realizes she could be in very real trouble, and instead of focusing on that problem, she develops a theory about the similarities between human children and a beehive. This description is also an example of how Grace experiences the world around her. She feels the energy ripple through the auditorium, and in her mind, that translates into a scientific concept that she can more readily understand.

“She nods at Ellie and Hank. ‘They’re the ones you should thank. It’s a great thing to have one good friend, but to have two looking out for you? That’s nothing short of wonderful.’”

The principal of Grace’s school says this after Hank and Ellie come to Grace’s rescue and keep her from getting in trouble for scattering the buttons all over the schoolyard. Prior to their entrance, Grace was prepared to face the consequences of her actions, knowing that she did something wrong that caused a problem. However, the arrival of Hank and Ellie shows what true friendship is all about. Both Hank and Ellie understand that Grace has gone through a difficult time. Ellie feels guilty that she has helped to contribute to this, and Hank knows that Grace isn’t normally the kind of person to cause trouble and that she only did so because she was under incredible stress. The principal’s comment here emphasizes the fact that anyone can make a mistake, and it also highlights the importance of having other perspectives to clarify any given situation. After hearing what Hank and Ellie have to say, the principal is sensitive to Grace’s situation, and that sensitivity causes her to let Grace off easier because she now knows the trouble behind Grace’s actions.