Sam Jones

Character Analysis

Our sixteen-year-old leading guy is just like any other high school kid. He loves to skateboard, hang out with his buddies, and crush on hot girls like Alicia. When he first meets Alicia, Sam is so nervous that she's out of his league. And when it looks like he doesn't have a shot with her, he blows her off for being a jerk. It's our first glimpse of how Sam interacts with chicks, and we have to say, we're impressed. Even though he's young and relatively inexperienced when it comes to the ladies, he sure knows how to call 'em like he sees 'em.

Love at First Sight

Listen to how Sam puts it after he tells Alicia off for being rude:

It was one of my greatest moments: all the words came out right, and I meant everything I said, and I was glad I'd said it. I wasn't doing it for effect either. I was really, properly sick of her, for about twenty seconds. (2.81)

Luckily for Sam, the whole bad boy thing works on Alicia and the two of them hook up before we know it.

We can also tell that their relationship isn't one made of the deep stuff. Sam thinks Alicia's hot and that's about it—at first. Sure, he might say he loves her, but he's more interested in getting into her pants. They go through a lot together, but that doesn't mean they are meant to be together forever. It's classic teen romance: The heat turns up fast, but then the romance fizzles just as quickly.

Life Isn't Like the Movies

Later on, Sam thinks about whether he loves Alicia—he's still not sure. Here's the way he sees it:

[…] if it had been a film, I would have told her how much I loved Alicia, and loved our baby, and loved her, and we would have cried and hugged and Alicia would have woken up and the baby would have popped out, just like that. But we weren't in a film, and I didn't love hardly any of those people. (14.66)

He's not trying to be mean; he just knows that he doesn't have these kinds of feelings for Alicia simply because she had his baby. It's a tough pill to swallow, but sometimes that's what happens when you knock someone up before you're really committed to them—just because you have a kid together doesn't mean you're soul mates. Both Sam and Alicia have to learn about growing up while dealing with becoming parents at the same time.

Who's Your Daddy?

Sam isn't so sure about the fatherhood thing. Sure, he loves his son. He also knows it's changed his life big time. He tells us:

Even though I met my son when I got whizzed into the future, and he seemed like a really nice kid, and so it feels terrible to say that I don't want him. But I don't feel like a dad, and I'm too young to be a dad, and I don't know how I'm going to cope with the next few hours, let alone the next however many years. But I couldn't say that, could I? Because how could I explain about the future and TH and all that? (14.65)

Gulp. We understand the position Sam is in. He loves Roof, but he wishes he could get a do-over at life. It's tough being a dad at any point in life, let alone when you're not even an adult yet. It propels Sam into the future in ways he can't take back.

We really appreciate that Sam is big enough to admit that this still isn't the way he wants his life to turn out, even though he loved Roof. Hey, we all wish for a do-over sometimes. In the end, Sam realizes that life doesn't have to be perfect to be worth living. When he flashes forward the final time, he thinks he's doing just fine.

He figures out something important, too: "There was a lot of work to do, and arguments to have, and kids to take care of, and money to find from somewhere, and sleep to lose. I could do it, though. I could see that" (20.34). In other words, even though Sam's life is different than he wanted it to be, he's still happy and healthy. He's making it work.

By the end, Sam's grown up a lot from the skateboarding kid we meet at the beginning of the book. Even though he doesn't have everything figured out yet, he's well on his way. No longer is he worried about how stuff is going to turn out or stressing over the small stuff. He's more mature now and ready to see where life takes him. In the end, that's all he can ask for.