Triangles/Geometry

This one's the easy one, and it pops up all over the place. What do triangles have? Three sides, Shmoopers. And when do you study triangles? In geometry. And this story opens with Leticia taking a zero hour geometry class. Just like that, we're set up to look for triangular—or three-sided—dynamics.

Think: Aggressor, victim, witness. Think: Trina, Dominique, Leticia.

Triangles run right through the book, and references to them are rarely obtuse. Leticia is the most explicit about the triangle she says she's not in (though we know she is). She says:

It's a Dominique-Trina line, not a Dominique-Trina-Leticia triangle. Why? Because I'm not in it. It's not my business. Therefore, I stay out of it. (13.5)

But Leticia doesn't have a choice, really, whether the situation is a triangle or a line. She may not want to be part of the triangle, but she inevitably is since she overheard Dominique's threat and Trina didn't. In fact, Leticia continually thinks of the situation from a geometric perspective.

And this is my point. Why would I get involved in Trina's life when I don't know for sure if I saw what I thought I saw? Who is to say that Dominique doesn't mean something else? Who is to say I wasn't seeing it from the wrong angle? (9.29)

This kind of thinking implies direct involvement whether Leticia admits it or not.

There are a ton of other triangles in the novel. The attack takes place at 2:45, or two forty-five degree angles in a triangle. Two of the angles—Dominique and Trina—come crashing together since the third angle, Leticia, opts not to do her part to keep them apart. Heck, even Dominique, Shayne, and Viv make up their own triangle of friends, with Viv and Shayne equally supporting Dominique, who is much more dominant. So keep your eyes open for references to triangles, geometry, and angles while reading, Shmoopers. You may be surprised by what you find.