The Darkest Minds

“I felt a fire start at the ends of my hair and burn its way through my skull. The fever I thought I had kicked suddenly painted the world a fuzzy shade of gray. I was seeing Sam’s blank face, and she was gone, replaced by white-hot memories that didn’t belong to me—a whiteboard at school filled with math problems, a golden retriever digging in a garden, the world rising and falling from the perspective of a swing, the roots of the vegetables in the Garden being pulled free, the brick wall at the back of the Mess Hall against my face as another fist swung down towards me—a quick assault from every side, like a series of camera flashes.”

Here, Ruby describes what the experience of accidentally erasing Sam’s memories appears like from her vantage point. When this occurs, Ruby and Sam have fought, and Ruby is trying to make her friend understand her. This moment is meant to be disorienting to Ruby, as she realizes her powers are out of her control, and it will ultimately mean she has lost her only friendship. Bracken uses sensory language here, taking the reader through a fast, jarring series of evocative visual images that suggest that Ruby is seeing random glimpses of Sam’s memories from different times in her life. She also evokes the imagery of illness, suggesting the confusion of having a high fever.

“We had to find a way to amuse ourselves because we had no stories—no dreams, no future—other than the ones we created for ourselves.”

This passage is Ruby’s reflection on the nightly ritual her cabin goes through at Thurmond: taking turns telling one another a continuous story before they go to sleep. In this scene, the girls in her cabin are in the middle of telling a story about a princess in a tower, and they are encouraging one another to make it more interesting. Ruby, who is considering taking the pills Cate has given her and trying to escape Thurmond, realizes here that the camp is a place that ultimately offers no possibility of a regular life to the young people who live there. When they tell each other stories, they’re creating their own world where they imagine what it might be like to have hope for a future.

“The most important thing you did was learn how to survive. Do not let anyone make you feel like you shouldn’t have—like you deserved to be in that camp. You are important, and you matter.”

Ruby speaks these lines to Cate as they are driving away from Thurmond in the middle of the night. Ruby is experiencing guilt that she has been rescued from the camp while others have been left behind, and this reassurance from Cate is meaningful to her. Later, however, these words take on a more complicated meaning as Cate’s motivations (and the motivations of the Children’s League) are revealed to be more suspect. We later discover the League acted entirely with the intent to discover and extract Oranges from camps. Ruby may be important and matter to Cate not only because she is a human being, but specifically because she is a potentially valuable Orange.

“There were boys at Thurmond. Plenty of them, in fact. But any activity that involved the commingling of the sexes—whether that was eating together, sharing cabins, or even passing one another on the way to the Washrooms—was strictly forbidden. The PSFs and camp controllers enforced the rule with the same severity they did with the kids who—however intentionally or unintentionally—used their abilities. Which, of course, only drove everyone’s already hormone-drunk brains crazier, and turned some of my cabinmates into an elite breed of covert stalkers.”

Here Ruby details how boys and girls were separated at Thurmond, which has implications for how confident she feels interacting with male characters after she leaves the camp. This passage offers her thoughts about why she feels so uncomfortable interacting with Martin, the Orange boy about her age who is riding in the backseat of the car with her as Cate drives them away from Thurmond, and why Martin seems to be unable to respect personal boundaries with her. Understanding Ruby’s inexperience with interacting with boys is also relevant when she later meets Liam, Chubs, and other male characters.

“Both boys were staring back at me, wearing two completely different expressions. Liam’s tanned face had gone porcelain pale, his mouth hanging open in an almost comical way. The other boy only glared at me through his thin, silver-framed glasses, his lips pursed in disapproval, the same way my mom’s used to when she found out I had stayed up past my bedtime.”

This passage is Ruby’s perception of the moment that Liam and Chubs first spot her in the back seat of Black Betty after Zu has snuck her in. Bracken uses this moment both to provide some descriptive details about Liam’s and Chubs’s physical appearance, as well as to give some initial hints about the characters' personalities. Liam’s open-mouth gape is a sign of his unguardedness, as well as perhaps an early suggestion that he may find Ruby’s appearance attractive. Chubs’s glare and look of disapproval signals his early mistrust and wariness toward her.

“It had been so long since I’d even wanted a friend that I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to go about making one. In first grade, it had been stupidly simple. Our teacher had told us to write down our favorite animal on a sheet of paper, and then we had to go around the room until we found someone with a matching animal. Because making friends was supposed to be that easy, apparently—finding someone else who liked elephants.”

In these lines, Ruby considers how long it has been since she has intentionally tried to make a friend. During this scene, Ruby is talking to Liam while he is stealing gas for Black Betty in the parking lot of the motel. Although she admits that he has been nothing but nice to her, she feels nervous about talking to him and potentially becoming closer. In this passage, she contrasts her awkwardness as a 16 year old with how easy it was when she was in first grade and the teacher had friends match up based on what animals they drew. This also underlines how much easier life was in early childhood when Ruby could trust adults to make personal decisions for her, although back then she also lacked power to choose for herself.

“I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers.”

In these lines, spoken by Liam, he is explaining to Ruby about Zu’s lack of speech: That it is related to the trauma of being at Caledonia and the violent breakout from the camp. Liam is speaking about Zu, suggesting that she must be repressing the need to talk about what she went through because she isn’t sure how to voice it. Ruby, who didn’t speak for a full year after she erased Sam’s memories, agrees with his words and feels they are also applicable to her. This idea relates to the thematic importance of memory, as the characters need to be able to speak their remembered experiences out loud and share them with others in order to process them.

“They were ‘Missing’ posters with the faces of little kids and teenagers, photographs, signs whose wording had been smeared away by rain—the biggest of these being a banner that said nothing more than MATTHEW 19:14. It hung crookedly, almost like someone had tried to rip it down, only to have someone else come along and halfheartedly string it back up. The wall of faded paper took a beating as the wind blew through the fence, ripping some of the more decrepit sheets free and making others flutter like hummingbird wings. And where there was room, we saw stuffed animals and flowers and blankets and ribbons.”

Here Ruby describes the wall of missing posters families have put up for their children. The posters sadden Ruby and the others, as they know the missing young people are likely not coming back, and Ruby is struck by how badly their families wanted them. The banner “MATTHEW 19:14,” a biblical allusion, refers to the passage: “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” This allusion’s reminder to treat children well and to assure them access to the divine plays into the novel’s theme that the young can be unfairly feared and ignored.

“The ash trees lining the lonely one-lane back road were just coming into their lovely young skin, but in the afternoon light their shadows couldn’t have been longer.”

This passage, at the end of Chapter 13, is the last image of the travelers’ detour through Harrisonburg, Virginia, where they saw the college campus missing its students and posters put up by families. Bracken pulls together the thematic content of this chapter with this sentence using an example of personification. The ash trees symbolize the youth of the society Ruby lives in, and they are just coming into their own skin, but their “shadows” are very long, suggesting that there is darkness constantly chasing after them (224). The implied meaning is that just as the younger generation of this world is coming to maturity, they are under serious and constant threat.

“I wanted to leave. This was not a safe place. This was not a place to bring Zu or Chubs—so why was Liam still going forward? Overhead, the emergency lights flicked on and off, buzzing like boxes of trapped flies. Everything beneath them was cast in a sickly green light, and as he moved farther and farther down the first aisle, it seemed like the darkness waiting at the end of it would swallow him whole.”

This passage articulates Ruby’s feelings and impressions as she and Liam enter the abandoned Walmart in Roanoke, checking it out to see if their group can go inside and possibly spend the night. In these lines, Bracken draws on sensory language to build tension and to create an ominous mood. The lights buzz like “trapped flies,” a simile that brings to mind having no escape, and their green hue is “sickly,” a word with unsettling connotations (229). All of the word choices here provide foreshadowing that something is not as it should be inside the Walmart.

“When I caught up to him again, my fingers closed around the soft, loose leather of his jacket’s sleeve. At the slightest tug, Liam turned, his blue eyes lit up in surprise. I took a step back and pulled my hand back to my side, shocked at myself. It had felt natural to do it—I hadn’t been thinking at all, only feeling a very sharp, real need to be close to him.”

Here, Ruby finds her natural impulse to be close physically to Liam overrides her fear of hurting him with her abilities. She describes her reaction as “shocked,” as she is usually very aware she needs to be careful touching others, but she also acknowledges that this was a “very sharp, real need to be close to him” (229). This passage is an important step in the development of Ruby’s relationship with Liam.

“‘They really wouldn’t give you any more information?’ I said.

Liam looked down at the ground. ‘Greg made us an offer—a trade—but we turned him down.’

‘What did he want?’ What was so valuable that they wouldn’t trade it for the one thing that would reunite them with their families? Black Betty?

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Liam said, and there was finality in his voice.”

These lines of dialogue occur after Liam and Chubs have had a chance to have a discussion with Greg and the other boys inside the Walmart. They had hoped that the boys living in the Walmart might give them information leading to East River. Ruby and Zu had to leave the conversation because the boys were making unkind comments about Zu’s abilities and had been inappropriately showing their obvious sexual attraction to Ruby. Bracken never reveals for certain what it was that Greg asked for in trade for information, but from Liam’s hesitation to discuss it, we can infer that it may have been Ruby herself. Liam’s and Chubs’s refusal to discuss trading Ruby is a sign of their decency, as well as her importance to their group and to Liam personally.

“‘Oh my God!’ Chubs said, ‘Oh my God!’ And then we were saying it together, jumping up and down, arms flung around one another like two damn fools—like we had never, ever wanted to reach over and slap each other multiple times on multiple days. I hugged him without any kind of fear or self-consciousness, fiercely, with a rush of emotion that almost brought tears to my eyes.”

This is an important turning point for Chubs’s and Ruby’s friendship: The moment after they figure out the location of East River after having stayed up all night together guarding their tent. Chubs has been slow to accept Ruby as part of their Black Betty community, and Ruby has not had as warm a relationship with him as with Zu or Liam. In this passage, their joy and feeling of solidarity at having overcome an obstacle brings them together, causing them to forget their prior resentments and even inspiring them to express their feelings physically. Ruby does not even worry about using her abilities when she touches him. After this moment, Chubs and Ruby will demonstrate more obvious loyalty to one another.

“My foot slipped against a rock as I stepped away, my back scraping against the wall, my head sending me spiraling into panic. It was trilling in anticipation, relishing how close he was. Maybe his anger had evaporated, but whatever he was feeling now was stronger than before, stronger than pain or frustration or fury. The words Get away from me and Don’t were stuck in my tight chest, wedged between terror and want. Liam’s lips formed my name, but there was nothing outside of the blood rushing in my ears.”

In this passage, Ruby expresses her ambivalence about physical closeness with Liam. Liam, who walked away from the van in anger, has confessed to Ruby he is troubled about not being a good enough leader. After she reassures him she is someone he can open up to, he begins to step toward her, as though he wants to kiss her. As she stumbles backward here, she is excited and happy, feeling her head “trilling in anticipation” and “relishing how close he was” (275). Yet she also is filled with panic and “terror” (275). This passage illustrates the opposing impulses Ruby’s character feels regarding intimacy.

“‘Hand him your gun,’ I said, tilting my head toward the place I knew Liam was standing. When she didn’t move, I pushed the image of her doing it through the bubbling black shapes of her mind. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his reaction as the black weapon was placed in his outstretched hand.”

Here, we see Ruby using her Orange abilities completely, with full intention, to protect the group of Black Betty travelers who have been captured by the skip tracer Lady Jane. This moment is significant because she has been forced to do this in front of Liam, Chubs, and Zu, so she is exposing herself as an Orange. Bracken provides specific visual details of what it is like for Ruby to overpower Lady Jane’s will: pushing a picture of an action into “the bubbling black shapes of her mind” (285). She also describes Ruby’s hesitation to look at Liam, an indication of her character’s intense fear of being viewed as a monster.

“We didn’t have many traditions as a family, but chocolate pancakes on birthdays was one of them, and the one we were least likely to forget. For the past three years they’d forgotten to leave out milk and cookies for Santa, somehow forgotten their pact that we would go camping every Fourth of July weekend, and even, on occasion, forgot to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. But forgetting the birthday pancakes?”

This passage occurs in the flashback at the beginning of Chapter 19 to Ruby’s 10th birthday; the morning she realizes her parents no longer remember her. Here, Ruby has come down from her bedroom expecting her birthday to be remembered in a typical way by her mother, who is up making breakfast, and she sees that she is not preparing the traditional birthday pancakes. This is Ruby’s first indication that something is not right with her parents’ recall of her. This passage emphasizes how important the pancakes are in Ruby’s family; other holidays and occasions might be forgotten, but not this particular tradition, linked to love for family members.

“I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them.”

This passage, also part of the flashback in Chapter 19, describes the garage where Ruby’s parents locked her up, not remembering who she is. The glaring visual reminders Ruby focuses on here, the memories of her life with her parents that are staring them in the face—the bike, the tent, the sled—make her parents’ forgetting seem all the more unnatural and horrifying. That they are not able to see and wonder about why there is a child’s bike in the garage, for example, implies frightening damage done to their minds. Listing these typical family memories here also heightens the pathos of the situation.

“‘It feels like we should do something,’ [Liam] said. ‘Like, send her off on a barge out to sea and set her on fire. Let her go out in a blaze of glory.’

[…] [W]hen Zu reappeared in our line of sight, she wasn’t empty-handed. Clutched between her fingers were four small yellow flowers—wild weeds, by the looks of it. […] She walked over to the van, stood on her toes, and lifted up the closest windshield wiper. With delicate fingers, she positioned each flower in a row, keeping the straight across the cracked glass.”

Liam expresses his desire to mark the end of their time in Black Betty, the minivan they are forced to abandon in Chapter 20. Zu finds a way to memorialize the loss by putting four simple flowers on the windshield, one for each of the characters. Zu seems to understand how important it is for all four of them to take time to intentionally remember Black Betty before they leave.

“And then he was staring at me again, one corner of his lips turning up, then the other. A warm, fizzling sensation filled my head, sending my pulse spiking. I turned away and broke eye contact, but the image still flooded my head, spilling in until I thought I might choke. In my mind’s eye, I saw Clancy and me alone in the same room, him on one knee, offering a rose in my direction. Forgive me? His voice was loud in my ears, echoing as I stumbled down the stairs.”

This passage shows one of Clancy Gray’s first intrusions into Ruby’s head: an apology for too aggressively reciting the details of her life story when he first met her. Bracken uses visceral, sensory language to evoke what the experience of having Clancy push into her mind is like: it is “warm, fizzling,” and “flooded her head, spilling in,” creating the image of an overflowing liquid. It has a physical reaction on Ruby, making her pulse go faster and causing her to feel like she might choke. All of these details, which have a negative connotation, contrast with the friendly picture he projects: himself with a rose, apologizing. This juxtaposition of unpleasant physical reaction with seemingly pleasant message is an early hint that Clancy is not using his abilities in honest ways.

“[Liam] grinned—his first real grin in days—and I felt something tug at my belly button. The sensation was warm, tingling, and familiar. Liam pretended he was hauling a line in, and Zu actually stopped her frolicking to act it out with him. Their faces were flushed and glowing with a sheen of sweat. With nothing but fine dust and mud between us, I slid right over to them—right into Liam’s outstretched hands.”

At East River, after everyone has eaten dinner, someone begins to play music, and the young people begin to dance. Ruby is hesitant to join in, and this passage describes Liam’s flirtatious use of his Blue powers to pull her to the dance floor, with Zu playing along. This is one of the few times we see a main character use their Psi abilities for fun, not for defense or aggression, which Liam feels more comfortable doing at East River. This passage also provides information about how much more comfortable Liam and Ruby’s relationship has become. The feeling of Liam’s power pulling on her is “familiar,” and he is confident enough to pull her into a dance.

“[Clancy] had called me his ‘friend’ several times, during our lessons and in front of other kids, and it surprised me how much I recoiled at the term. Clancy had hundreds of friends. I wanted to be more than that—I wanted him to trust me and confide in me. Sometimes, I just wanted him to lean closer, to tuck my hair behind my ear. It was a repulsively girly thought, though, and I wasn’t sure what dark corner of my mind it had come crawling out of. I think my head was playing tricks on me, because I knew what I really wanted was for Liam to do that—do more than that.”

This passage demonstrates Ruby’s developing, sometimes conflicted feelings about Clancy as she is working with him to learn to control her Orange abilities. She describes here a desire to be considered more than his friend—to be someone he especially relies on. She also describes feeling what appears to be attraction to him, having what she refers to as a “repulsively girl thought” about him touching her hair, although this also seems to her like her “head was playing tricks on her,” as she associates these feelings more with Liam (379). This passage is foreshadowing the eventual reveal that Clancy is manipulating Ruby’s perceptions of him using his abilities. It may be viewed as an example of unreliable narration, as we cannot determine clearly what motivations belong to her and what Clancy has planted.

“I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead. ‘You really don’t hate me,’ I breathed out. ‘You’re not scared—not even a little?’

His battered face twisted with what I thought was supposed to be a smile. ‘I’m scared to death of you, but for a completely different reason.’

‘I’m a monster, you know. I’m one of the dangerous ones.’

‘No you aren’t,’ he promised. ‘You’re one of us.’”

Here, Ruby voices her fear that she is a monster, one of the recurring motifs in this novel. Before this passage, Ruby shared with Liam the story of what she did to her parents’ and Sam’s memories, as well as her fears she could accidentally do the same to his mind, too. Liam has reassured her it won’t happen to him, that he could not forget her. Ruby expects in the passage that Liam might fear or mistrust her, viewing herself as an Orange monster, but Liam’s response is to reject her monster characterization and emphasize that she is part of their chosen community, part of the group. This is one example of how thematically important it is to the characters in this novel to intentionally create homes, families, and places to fit in—a common trope in young adult novels.

“It was the cold water that woke me, more than the woman’s soft voice. ‘You’re all right,’ she was saying. ‘Ruby. You’re gonna be fine.’ I’m not sure who she thought she was fooling with her sweet little B.S., but it wasn’t me.

The smell of rosemary was back, filling my nose with a memory that felt both ancient and new. Which was it?”

These lines, which open the last chapter of the novel, signal that Ruby is now back with Cate and under the control of the Children’s League, after having made the decision to press the panic button in an attempt to save Chubs’s life. Although Cate’s words are as potentially comforting as they were at the beginning of the novel, Ruby’s reaction to them in the narration is entirely suspicious. This demonstrates how much Ruby’s character has changed from the girl Cate first approached at Thurmond, who was wary, but also somewhat eager to accept adult caretaking and kindness. Ruby also references the rosemary smell here, which she associates with memories of Cate and with her mother’s face cream, memories old and new.