How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Do you ever wonder how someone our age can possibly be dead? There's just something unnatural about it […] If you saw the photo you'd understand. You'd want to say to the kid in it, 'Why weren't you strong enough to resist death? Didn't that look in your eye stop anything bad from ever happening to you?'" (16.92)
Like Jessa and her serial killer clippings, Santangelo finds himself questioning death in his own way through Webb's photo in his dad's police files. Unlike the original five, who faced death head-on on multiple occasions, the idea of losing someone his own age is foreign and terrifying to the present day Santangelo.
Quote #8
This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating. (18.49)
The common denominator among all the present-day teenage characters seems to be their inability to deal with the idea of someone their own age dying. For Taylor in particular, knowing that she's now older than her father was when he died puts life in an entirely new perspective.
Quote #9
We sit next to each other in silence while the emergency crew comes in and out and the ambulance officers begin to arrive. Sometimes I see Murrumbidgee faces at the door but Santangelo's dad instructs Richard to take them updates to the senior rooms. Because he thinks they're going to be wheeling out bodies through the door and he doesn't want the kids to see them. For the billionth time I feel sick. (25.114)
There seem to be two responses of characters in this book to death: The first is to address it directly, the way Jessa seems to with her serial killer scrapbook, while the second is to try to shield the weaker characters from it. Along with the Murrumbidgee students, Hannah blocks Webb from seeing their mother's body and the divers at the scene of Webb's disappearance try to use Jude to take Hannah away in case they find a body.