Deanna Lambert

Character Analysis

Not a Nympho or Psycho… Really

… though if you listened to the other kids at Terra Nova high, you'd probably think she was both. What Deanna actually is though, is a confused, possibly clinically depressed girl who just wants a boy to like her. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Most of us have known (or been) a Deanna ourselves. The biggest thing Deanna wants is to know that somebody really cares about her and loves her enough to choose her over everyone else.

The boy she wishes would choose her is her best friend Jason, who falls in love with her other friend Lee instead, prompting her to write in her journal, "I, Deanna Lambert, belong to no one, and no one belongs to me. I don't know what to do" (7A.1-2). She gave up her virginity to Tommy when he told her she was special—"Those words rang in my head […] Tommy, in his car, a boy—a man—telling me I had something other girls didn't" (6.107)—but only with Jason does she feel comfortable: "It's funny how just a couple of words from him could make me feel a million times better" (7.22).

Tommy's words, most of which consist of asking her if she wants to get high and cajoling her into sex, make her feel a million times worse. As she says when telling us the Tommy story for the first time, "I didn't love him. I'm not sure I even liked him." (Prologue.1-2)

So why would she sleep with him, then? Good question. Sure he paid attention to her, but it's more than that. First of all, there's the physical-attraction thing—Tommy makes her feel that tingly, lustful, crush feeling for the first time, and we all know how powerful that can be. Then he taunts her with marijuana, telling her she's too young and sweet for it, so she smokes because she wants to show him she's not a little kid. And once she's high, it's a lot easier to do the stuff he wants.

Lust, flattery, and impaired judgment are the unholy trifecta that causes Deanna to lose her virginity so young. But once she sobers up, she's not proud of what she did, and her self-esteem takes a major hit—and having her dad treat her like dirt for the next three years doesn't help matters either. By the time we meet her, she's starting to internalize (a.k.a. believe) what everybody else says: that she's damaged and worthless.

They Say Girls Fall in Love with Guys Like their Dads

You've heard that old adage that we fall in love with people who resemble our parents, right? Well let's look at how Tommy resembles Deanna's dad. Neither are great communicators, and neither have much respect for women.

Deanna's dad hasn't so much as hugged her since she entered puberty (ouch), so when Tommy shows her some attention and approval, she gets what she's starved for. It's not real affection, of course—he just wants sex—but her dad's infrequent acknowledgments that she's alive aren't real affection either. At least Tommy shows her physical contact, though it ultimately destroys her reputation.

When Tommy blasts the news of taking her virginity throughout the school, there's nothing Deanna can say to make people believe that she's not just some psycho who will do whatever boys tell her. Her own dad doesn't even want to hear what she has to say, or to have much to do with her at all; the night he catches her with Tommy. Deanna tells us how it went down:

I started to say something. I don't remember what.

"Don't," he said.

That was almost three years ago.

My dad hasn't looked me in the eye or talked to me, really talked to me, since. (Prologue.8-11)

Deanna's dad gives up on her after she sleeps with Tommy. Tommy gives up on her when she won't sleep with him anymore. But most tragic of all, because of how they've both treated her, Deanna gives up on herself.

But Her Mom Stands Up for Her, Right?

Think again. Mom tries just as hard to stay out of Dad's way as everybody else:

My mom is hardly ever home because of working so much and I don't think Dad has touched me since puberty, even before Tommy. (2.44)

Deanna's just one member of an entire family that walks on eggshells around her dad.

Although Deanna never comes right out and tells us, she's afraid of becoming her mother, who works a dead-end retail job, tries to soothe everyone's anxieties with food, and is trapped in a miserable marriage. We know she's afraid of following in her mom's footsteps because she wants so badly to get out of her house, even if it means leaving her mother behind. She fantasizes about the life she'll have with Stacy and Darren, though she doesn't actually have much hope that things will be different in the long term. As she tells Lee,

You want my advice? My advice is that you're not missing anything and in a couple of years you'll go to college and me and Jason will be here in Pathetica working crap-ass jobs and hanging out at Denny's, so why waste your time? On either of us. (5.105)

So it's a huge moment for Deanna when her mom actually shows her some love late in the book—just resting her head in her mother's lap and having her hair petted brings her to tears. When her mom touches her, Deanna thinks,

I know that having faith in your family isn't the same as God or religion or whatever, but I could kind of get what Lee meant about believing in something when it made more sense not to. (12.56)

When you're that starved for affection, the tiniest bit of love and gentleness can feel huge. Who knows—if Deanna's parents had paid that much attention to her all along, she might never have hooked up with Tommy. She might have had enough self-esteem that she wouldn't have needed to jump at the first boy to notice and compliment her; she might have felt loved and connected and been better able to see Tommy for who he was.

Sometimes You Gotta Lay the Smack Down

When Deanna's mom and her brother, Darren, start to show her some love (Mom with the head-petting and the admission that there's no excuse for Dad's behavior; Darren with the offer of a place to stay when he and Stacy move out), Deanna starts to get a little self-confidence. She shoves Bruce—her worst bully—to the floor in the mall food court, and she writes Lee a letter to make amends. But most importantly, she stands up to Tommy when he tries to take advantage of her again.

So when she tells him a few days later, "I don't hate you anymore. Something about you still pisses me off, but I don't hate you" (11.40), it's a huge moment for her. She may not have fixed her reputation with either her peers or her dad, but she's done what she had to do to become a better person. She's told him how she felt and then forgiven him. This is the biggest change we see in Deanna over the course of the book: she learns to speak her mind, which means she can learn to forgive.

And when you forgive the people who hurt you—in this case, Tommy—you begin, as Deanna does, to take back your power. It's enough to make you feel like a whole different person, a person with a spark of hope, a person who can stand up for yourself after all. It may not bring your self-esteem back right away, but as Deanna says, "[…] I was the new Deanna. I'd dealt with Tommy. Things had changed" (9.52). You go, girl.