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Monday's Not Coming
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BetaChapters 21-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “The After”
Claudia writes to Monday, telling her she’s gotten a tutor and will be going to The Learning Center (TLC). She asks why Monday’s ghosted her like this. Claudia is terrified of being bullied when the other students see that she’s in TLC.
Claudia’s new tutor, Ms. Walker, lives in a nice part of town. On their first day, she gives Claudia translucent colored plastic sheets to place over books and assignments, aiding reading comprehension. One day, Claudia runs into Michael (the cute boy from church) when she arrives at Ms. Walker’s front door. Ms. Walker is his grandmother. Embarrassed and worried he’ll tell everyone at school about her dyslexia, Claudia rushes away, telling him she got her days mixed up. Michael asks her to come to the mall with him, and she agrees.
Michael takes her to the Pentagon City Mall in Crystal City, Virginia. He is easygoing and polite, and everyone he comes into contact with is charmed by him. Claudia hopes she won’t get into too much trouble for ditching tutoring. She figures Michael’s churchgoing reputation will help.
They run into Megan from Claudia’s dance class. She’s with one of Michael’s friends, Kam. She seems embarrassed to see Claudia. When Michael introduces her, Kam recognizes Claudia as “Monday’s homegirl.” He must live in Ed Borough. Claudia wants to ask him about Monday, but Megan sees Claudia looking at Kam intently and pulls him away to get ice cream.
Michael and Claudia order hot chocolate and talk. Thoughts of Monday have darkened Claudia’s mood, but Michael’s charm and humor lightens it. He tells her his father retired from the Air Force but has spent the last three years working in Dubai, where he fixes planes. In their conversation, Claudia discovers that Ms. Walker had asked Michael to take one of her students out because the student seemed sad. He says he is glad it’s Claudia. He tells Claudia that she seems very depressed, and he’s there for her if she wants to talk. He gives her his phone number with a smile that makes Claudia’s stomach lurch. “I did feel comfortable around Michael, but he also felt like a sharp needle that could pop my newly airtight bubble and hurt me. Just like it hurt Monday” (157).
Chapter 22 Summary: “The Before”
To keep others from seeing her going to TLC, Claudia took extravagant routes to and from her classes. While doing this, she literally ran into Mrs. Valente one day. When she learned that an email went around to all the teachers about her being added as a TLC student, Claudia started hyperventilating with panic. She feared that people would think she was stupid and bully her.
Mrs. Valente convinced Claudia to confide in her, and Claudia told Mrs. Valente some of her fears, including that others think she’s a lesbian. Mrs. Valente vehemently told Claudia not to pay attention to rumors and that there was nothing wrong with being a lesbian or getting extra help at TLC. She apologized to Claudia, saying she noticed something was wrong last year, but Claudia’s needs got lost in the shuffle. “Claudia, I think you’re very bright,” she told her. “You just … absorb things differently than other students. But so do a lot of other people, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that” (162).
Mrs. Valente also revealed the school’s prerogative: to keep students moving so that the school’s ranking would stay high. She said that she spoke to the social worker, and Monday was being homeschooled by Mrs. Charles. Claudia insisted that Monday wasn’t home.
Claudia went to the police, telling them Monday was missing. An officer showed her the missing persons board, which was full of girls who looked just like Monday. The officer told her dozens of girls were reported missing every month, with up to 50 in one week sometimes. He said only a parent could file a missing persons report, and looking for Monday would take attention away from kids who were actually missing. He seemed jaded and not invested in finding them.
Later, Claudia helped her mother decorate their Christmas tree. Claudia asked Ma if she could be homeschooled, like Monday, but Ma said absolutely not. Claudia noticed the last few ornaments were “the most beautiful ones with the ugliest history” (169). She closed the lid and tried to hide the box. Ma asked for one more ornament, however, and Claudia handed her one crystal angel. The angels represented the children Ma had lost through miscarriage.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Two Years Before the Before”
Monday was at Claudia’s house, and Ma was curled up on the couch. She’d lost her fourth baby in a row. Claudia worried that she wasn’t enough for Ma and that her parents wanted a better version of her, “a version that could read and write with no problems. Maybe that’s why they kept trying and failing” (173).
Her face dark, Monday told Claudia that Claudia truly didn’t want siblings. She then tried to cheer Claudia up by giving her an early Christmas gift: the journal in which Claudia later writes to Monday. Claudia hated the gift, seeing it as a thorn in her side.
In the morning, she found Monday curled up on the couch with Ma. Claudia sat on the other side of her mother, and Monday offered her the rest of her cereal in a gesture of peace.
Chapters 21-23 Analysis
In Monday’s absence, Claudia finds herself in situations she never would have anticipated. She starts working with a tutor at TLC, addressing her dyslexia on her own for the first time. She also grows closer to Michael; just as Ma asked Michael to look after Sunday at church, Ms. Walker asks her grandson to look after a student who seems sad. Michael is a good influence whose friendliness and cheerfulness remind her of Monday.
While at the mall, they run into Megan and one of Michael’s friends from Ed Borough. Megan stares at Claudia oddly when Claudia seems like she wants to ask questions about Monday, and she pulls her boyfriend away. Megan’s behavior reveals that others know about Claudia’s challenges about understanding time and remembering what happened to Monday. Claudia also notes that Michael, despite her comfort with him, seems like someone who could burst her bubble. Like Megan, he knows about Claudia’s difficulties, and Claudia perceives that if she spends time around him, he’s going to jolt her back to a painful reality.
Ma’s attempts to have more children, as thrown in her face by Mrs. Charles, hurt Claudia, who feared she was not enough for her parents. Monday told Claudia she didn’t want siblings (considering the bite marks on Monday’s shoulder, it’s easy to understand Monday’s perspective). Claudia’s loneliness as an only child, however, may have contributed to her dependence on Monday.
In the absence of adult initiative, Claudia finally went to the police in Chapter 22, revealing the epidemic of missing black girls in the U.S. and portraying the apathy of a system that does too little to find them. The officer neither took Claudia seriously nor took Monday’s (or the other girls’) disappearances seriously. He brushed them off as runaways who weren’t getting their way at home. His behavior reflects the institutionalized racism and sexism that hold girls responsible for their suffering as well as a world in which missing black girls aren’t a priority.
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