56 pages • 1 hour read
Gordon KormanWhatshisface
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 25-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary: “Places, Everybody”
The acid-damaged tire on the Rolls-Royce collapses, which temporarily solves the problem of Wolfson. However, Cooper still faces the problem of time: it is 12:41 pm. The play starts in 19 minutes. Roddy cheers Cooper on, but Cooper is ready to admit defeat when Veronica comes to the rescue. She tells him to get into Chad’s car and calls their mother. The search party can cease its efforts, Veronica says, because she and Chad have just found Romeo.
Upon arriving at school, the group finds Cooper’s mother in tears and his father—who almost summoned the Army Rangers—demanding an explanation. A pale Marchese intervenes to pull Cooper backstage. Thankfully, Wolfson is late, so the play’s start time must be postponed anyway. Backstage, Jolie accuses Cooper of not caring about their performance. While changing into costume, Roddy is cheerful, but Cooper is upset: he’s dirty and sweaty, and Jolie is also mad at him. The makeup team rushes through its preparation.
Wolfson arrives and the play begins. On stage, Cooper notices Wolfson’s glaring, his sister and Chad snuggling, and an angry Brock scowling.
Cooper refocuses on his performance, and he wonders whether Jolie’s shining eyes mean that she has forgiven him in real life (or maybe she’s just acting?). Either way, their passionate performance buoys the crowd. During intermission, Wolfson comes backstage.
Chapter 26 Summary: “This One’s For You”
Backstage, Wolfson praises the play and spotlights Cooper’s performance. His acting has moved Wolfson greatly. He proclaims that he is looking forward to the second act. Menacingly, he also adds that he will enjoy the play’s aftermath.
Cooper blocks out Wolfson’s veiled threat by staying focused on the play. He feels like he’s genuinely experiencing the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. When he sees Juliet’s dead body, his tears are only partly acting. After the loud applause, Aiden tells Jolie and Cooper they “killed” the final scene. Jolie says Cooper was fantastic, but Cooper gives Jolie all the credit. Jolie kisses his cheek.
Wolfson returns with two police officers. After the curtain call, Cooper thanks Wolfson for supporting the play. He then holds up Roddy’s manuscript and announces that Shakespeare stole Romeo and Juliet from Roddy, who died before he could finish the original story, Barnabas and Ursula. The crowd is confused, and Marchese is bewildered. Cooper says Roddy is responsible for all the good parts of Romeo and Juliet, and that he deserves a huge thank you.
There is an awkward silence. Then people, including Jolie, begin to clap. A shiny thing, Roddy, rises above the actors and dramatically bows. He then spins out of control, and the stage lights pop and boom like fireworks. The gym lights turn on. Roddy and his manuscript are gone.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Under Arrest”
The cops arrest Cooper and bring him to the principal’s office. While they look for the manuscript, Wolfson confronts him. The manuscript is priceless—and Wolfson did not insure it, because doing so would prove that Shakespeare had indeed stolen Romeo and Juliet from Roddy. Wolfson calls Cooper’s story ‘absurd,’ and states that his personal researchers had discovered around 3000 Roderick Northrops in Elizabethan England. Cooper counters that only one of those Rodericks had worked in the printing shop that Shakespeare patronized. Wolfson again disparages Roddy’s writing. Cooper sticks up for Roddy.
The cops return to report that they can’t find the manuscript. Wolfson claims the ordeal is a “misunderstanding.” Nothing is missing, he bluffs: in fact, everything that has just happened was a part of the performance. Wolfson drops the charges but tells Cooper that if he ever discovers the manuscript is in circulation, he’ll bring them back. Wolfson leaves, and Cooper gets a text from Roddy. Roddy says that he will never forget Cooper.
Chapter 28 Summary: “A Gray Lie”
Cooper tells his family that the speech and the lights going out were a part of the show. His family is skeptical, so Cooper wonders if they’ll believe Roddy’s ghost came back to get credit for Romeo and Juliet. Captain Vega laughs. He wants to know about the ghost who took the plunger. The local newspaper, The Stratford Globe, attributes the lighting spectacle to faulty wiring. The newspaper also notes that Wolfson’s museum is closing for repairs and maintenance.
Epilogue Summary
Cooper’s GX-4000 finally works like the most sophisticated smartphone on the market. There are no more blurry photos. Roddy is gone, and Cooper misses him and his 16th-century words. Yet Cooper is glad that Roddy and his story are where they should be—wherever that is. Cooper concludes that the spectacular bow represented the end of Roddy’s mission.
Due to his wonderful performance in Romeo and Juliet, as well as its supernatural ending, Cooper is famous. Brock remembers his name occasionally, and Jolie becomes Cooper’s girlfriend. But Cooper’s greatest accomplishment—achieving a sense of belonging through his friendship with Roddy and helping to identify Roddy as the true source of Shakespeare’s famous play—remains a secret. Not many seventh graders can say they helped a 16th-century ghost correct a glaring wrong. At night, while thinking about Roddy, Cooper hugs himself and smiles.
Chapter 25-Epilogue Analysis
Korman uses imagery to dramatize Cooper and Roddy’s narrow escape from Wolfson and their suspenseful trip back to school. Korman illustrates the tire come off Wolfson’s Rolls-Royce and feel the hostility of the crowd as Cooper’s secret mission (and subsequent late arrival) jeopardizes the play. Similarly, Korman’s imagery is critical to depicting the play’s supernatural ending, allowing the narrative to portray Roddy’s dramatic bow and disappearance into a sparkling burst of light. Since the reader is in on the secret of Roddy’s existence, they know that the finale isn’t the product of, as Wolfson believes, “a third-rate magician” (221): it’s real. By extension, the reader realizes that they belong with Cooper and Roddy, because they’re aware of the things that the rest of the characters can’t fathom.
The present and past collide when Cooper brings Roddy’s past injustices into the performance of the play. His announcement indicates that history isn’t stagnant. In fact, people can use the present to address and fix past errors. People can’t change the past or heal every wound, but they can address past wrongs can give others a sense of peace. The truth does Roddy justice and frees him from his spectral life inside Cooper’s phone. If the past and present hadn’t engaged, Roddy would have stayed a discontent victim of plagiarism. As the narrator explains, “How many seventh graders can figure out a way to finish the quest of a sixteenth-century ghost seeking to right a wrong he never knew about, because the injustice happened after his death?” (231).
The importance of teamwork remains, with Roddy relying on Cooper to reveal Wolfson’s secret about the manuscript. For Roddy’s benefit, Cooper sacrifices himself and risks arrest. Due to Cooper, Roddy belongs. He gets thunderous applause and approval. Thanks to Roddy, Cooper belongs. He got to play Romeo, and now he has friends and a girlfriend, and “[e]ven Brock remembers his name most of the time” (231). Korman suggests that what matters most isn’t always visible to everybody. While finding belonging in Stratford isn’t a minor feat, the narrator declares, “Cooper’s greatest achievement is one he can never tell anyone about—not even Jolie” (231). The duo he formed with Roddy is Cooper’s crowning success. The best kind of validation occurs between people and away from the spotlight.
The Search for Belonging moves away from Roddy. With the manuscript in their control, Cooper goes back to worrying about Jolie’s anger. Cooper tells Roddy, “I’m sweaty and dirty. I smell like a hog. I don’t know how she’s going to stand beside me on the stage, much less decide she likes me again” (207). Now, art’s influence on life becomes a positive. By performing the play—that is, through participation in art—“the horrors of the morning melt away” (209). Art becomes a transcendent experience and an antidote. It takes Cooper away from his troubles with Wolfson and helps him restore his relationship with Jolie. The narrator admits, “Even during the very best of their dress rehearsals, the performance was never this inspired. The actors are feeding off the energy of the audience, flushed with growing triumph” (222). Art can create enchanting, forceful environments, even though the process of making impactful art can be grueling and painful.
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