Crank Chapters 251-260 Summary

Chapter 251: I Wasn't Scared—Yet

At juvie, Kristina gets asked a barrage of questions, which she responds to by lying. She finally asks if she can call her "brother" but we're pretty sure she doesn't mean Jake.
Sure enough, she gets Chase on the phone. She talks to him like he's her brother and he eventually gets the drift and says he'll see what he can do.
They assign Kristina to a cell, where she gets housed with some unsavory characters, including someone who was involved in a car jack and another person who beat her mother up with a gun. The one commonality is that all of them, including Kristina, have experience with meth.

Kristina spends much of the next day listening to her new bad girl roomies talk about their bad behavior and need for drugs.
Eventually Chase gets ahold of her parents to let them know where she is.
They come bail her out. What they don't know, though, is that being in juvie has left Kristina with a whole new set of connections for acquiring the monster.

Rule number one about going to juvie: Don't lie about your name. The admitting clerk will get mad and make you wait for two hours while she redoes your paperwork.
A counselor gets assigned to Kristina's case and orders twenty-four hours of community service.
When Kristina finally sees her family, Scott is too ticked off to say anything, Mom keeps crying and shouting stuff at her about lying and STDs and drugs, and her younger brother is just infatuated with the fact that she has been in some form of jail for some period of time.
Kristina, however, is okay with the situation. Her punishment could have been way worse than picking up trash, there are ways to sneak out of being grounded, and most of all, she has a legitimate connection with a crank manufacturer.

After the trip home from juvie, Kristina returns to her bedroom to find that her mom has gone through all her stuff. The only evidence she finds is a crumbled Marlboro wrapper and a lighter.
In response, Kristina gets more lectures about making good decisions, taking care of herself, not giving into peer pressure, and all that good parental be-a-good-kid stuff. Kristina makes some empty promises and her mom goes off to work on her great American novel.
After three days of going through life at a panicked, hardcore speed, Kristina decides to crash.

Kristina wakes up the next morning feeling mostly better, and while getting ready for school, she makes a list of resolutions for going forward.
With one week to go in the quarter, she'll ask for extra credit and apply herself to her studies.
She'll also commit more to her family, helping out around the house and writing to her grandmother, as well as reconnect with her dad and old friends who have been deserted throughout all this madness.
She had several creative projects in the works when things got out of control, including a portrait of John Lennon and a song about being on crank. Kristina vows to finish these.
She also chooses to manage—not quit, but manage—her bad habits. She does, however, choose to stop drinking blood, which is a plus.
She also wants to go to Planned Parenthood and get on the pill so she can keep doing the nasty with Chase and not worry about the consequences.

Putting her new resolutions into practice, however, isn't exactly easy. Most of her teachers aren't willing to give her make-up work or extra credit, and furthermore, Sarah and Trent have moved on and have new, more reliable friends (read: friends who don't hang out on the Avenue).
At home, Kristina seems to have totally lost Scott's trust, and doing extra chores isn't helping her get back in his good graces. As for her mom, she just wants her perfect little Kristina back and is being emotionally manipulative.
Kristina does manage to write to her grandmother, who she tells us will pass away in January. She hopes she made her grandmother's last days a little happier.
As for her artistic projects, the Lennon portrait is a lost cause and the lyrics just make her want meth.

Kristina describes meth as a monstrous octopus that can grab not just the outside of you with its tentacles, but actually reach inside you as well. Eventually, you get addicted to how the tentacles feel. Creepy.

As the middle of the week approaches, Kristina is craving drugs and Chase. To take care of the first problem, she gets a snort from Robyn, then uses her cellphone to call her new connection: La Eme.
La Eme, to be clear, is the code name for the Mexican Mafia. To make things worse, Kristina connects with a dude named Roberto who already knows about her from the girl she met in juvie.
To solve problem number two, she calls Chase and asks him to pick her up last period and take her to the bank.

Chase picks up Kristina and takes her to a secluded place up the road, where they have sex. He then drives her into town, telling her that he loves, missed her, and says his heart will "always belong" to her.
Kristina notes that he's the second person to say that to her. The first was Adam, and we all know how that turned out.

When Kristina gets back in the truck, she sees a letter lying on the passenger seat: Chase has been accepted to the film program at the University of Southern California with a full scholarship.
This is awesome for Chase, but what about Kristina? She starts crying because it's so far away, while Chase tries to encourage her to calm down and be happy for him.