Victor Vollmer the Third Timeline and Summary

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• Victor has decided to take over his friend Rat's paper route for one month during the summer, even though he's nervous about talking to new people because he suffers from his stuttering problem.
• Mam—the black woman who works for Victor's family—tells him that she'll go to collect money with him for his paper route, but he says that he'll do it all on his own.
• He starts on his route and gets in trouble with a woman named Mrs. Worthington when she thinks that he calls her a "b****" when he's really saying "pitch." He goes home to write her an apology letter since he can't explain well in person.
• The rest of the week goes by fine and Mrs. Worthington meets him outside one day and apologizes for yelling at him. She's super pretty and Victor finds himself looking forward to seeing her again.
• Victor runs into Ara T, the town junkman, and asks him to sharpen his knife. Ara T says that he's going to take it home and return it to Victor tomorrow, but asks Victor for fifty cents upfront.
• Victor goes to collect his paper money, which is difficult because he's nervous. He gets to a man named Mr. Spiro's house and the man gets chatty. When he asks Victor for his name, Victor has such a hard time saying it without stuttering that he passes out.
• When he comes to, Mr. Spiro has a wet cloth on his head and tells him that he shouldn't be embarrassed. Then he gives Victor a corner of a dollar bill with the word "student" on it.
• Victor runs into Ara T and asks for his knife back, but Ara T says that he won't give it back until Victor can say the word "knife" properly… which is impossible with his stutter. So now he's out a knife. Ugh.
• He decides to follow Ara T around to figure out where he keeps all of his stuff. He sees him entering a shed and decides to come back later when Ara T isn't around in order to grab his knife.
• He also sees a man coming out of Mrs. Worthington's house… and it's not Mr. Worthington. Victor starts to notice that Mrs. Worthington smells like booze all the time, too; she clearly drinks a lot.
• He also becomes friends with Mr. Spiro, who talks to him like a grown-up and shows him that reading and learning about the world is super cool.
• Victor finally tells Mam that Ara T took his knife; she gets mad at him because she's always told him to stay away from the junkman. But she also says that she'll get it back for him.
• Mam takes some days off of work and Victor goes out to dinner with his parents and their friends, where he ends up throwing up because he's so nervous about stuttering in front of a bunch of strange adults. It's a bummer, for sure.
• The next day Victor goes through his parents' stuff and finds his birth certificate… only to discover that his father isn't his real dad. Whoa—this is getting complicated.
• Victor's dad gets out of work early to go to the movies with him and Victor thinks about asking him about the birth certificate but chickens out.
• He continues on his paper route and hangs out with Mr. Spiro some more. He even reads a poem that he wrote to Mr. Spiro, which is something he'd never share with anyone else. Victor sees Mrs. Worthington passed out after drinking too much and overhears her fighting with her husband.
• When Victor comes home, Mam is there but her face is all messed up. He realizes that Ara T beat her up, though she keeps saying that she got into an accident.
• Victor decides to go into Ara T's shed to look for his knife, but doesn't find it there. On the way out, he runs into Ara T and gets caught, so he just keeps on running.
• During the week, Victor goes to the zoo with Mam and is upset by how many rules she has imposed on her because she is black. She's not allowed to do lots of things because it's still segregated.
• On the last day of Victor's paper route, he goes around and finds out that Mr. Spiro is packing up to leave on a trip, which makes him sad.
• He goes home and finds out that his room has been ransacked and his money stolen. It's obvious that this is Ara T's doing, and Mam says she's going to go after him.
• Victor goes with her because he doesn't want to leave her alone with Ara T, especially not after he beat her up last time.
• Mam goes into a building where Ara T is and tells Victor to wait outside. After a while, though, Victor goes inside—and it's a good thing, too, because he finds Ara T holding Mam up by her neck and choking her.
• That's when Victor throws a bottle right at Ara T's head and hits him. Ara T comes for Victor and threatens to strangle him, but Mam stabs Ara T with Victor's knife (yes, the same one that was stolen).
• Mam's friend, Big Sack, promises to make sure that Ara T moves along and doesn't bother Victor or Mam anymore. Mam reveals that she never liked Ara T because she suspected that he killed her brother way back in the day… which he admits to.
• Victor gets the last corner of the dollar bill from Mr. Spiro in a note, and it has the word "seeker" on it. He decides that he doesn't care if he's not biologically related to his dad; he still loves him a whole lot.
• Over the rest of the summer, Victor hangs out with his friend Rat and befriends TV Boy, a deaf kid who he met on his newspaper route. They become friends and bond over how hard it is for them to communicate.
• Victor starts junior high in the fall and is able to introduce himself in class without being afraid or passing out, even though he knows it's inevitable that he'll stutter. He's past worrying so much about that now.