When she tries to help other children, it doesn’t end well because she does for them what she would want done for herself. It should be black inside and that’s what I want so I put my head under the sofa cushion where the green plaid fabric smells like Dad’s sweat and Devon’s socks and my popcorn and the cushion feels soft and heavy on my head and I push deeper so my shoulders and chest can get under it too and there’s a weight on me that holds me down and keeps me from floating and falling and floating and falling like a the bird.”Ĭaitlin needs help in both connecting with her own loss and realizing what her emotions mean and in having empathy for others. It’s so gray that turning on a lamp is too sharp and it hurts.

Early on, she describes how “ the gray of outside is inside. That Caitlin needs this extra step, needs to help develop those things to understand how others think and what others feel, does not mean that she is without feelings. Already, she knows it is not always accurate. It is there to help Caitlin decode what people are thinking. Erskine makes this literal, as Caitlin at one point crawls into Devon’s chest and wishes to make his heart beat.Ī Facial Expressions Chart hangs on the wall of the counselor’s office in school. How did Devon die? A school shooter shot him in the chest. Devon, a Boy Scout, had been working on his Eagle Scout project when he died. She is the type of girl who hears “ a part of Devon will always be with you” and thinks that the ashes from his cremation are now in the air and around her. She learns about Closure, and knows she and her father need Closure, but no one can tell her a step by step way to achieve that.Ĭaitlin is also incredibly literal. She loves books because they have answers, but even that can only give her so much. You don’t know what to expect.”Ĭaitlin, who likes to know what to expect, is faced with that which has no road map. … When you mix red and yellow it might come out orange like the sun when it’s setting but when you mix red and yellow another time it might come out like a school bus and when you do it again it might come out like a hornet.

Colors are mushy and I don’t know where they end or what happens to them when they run into each other because they change. It’s not so much that sees the world in terms of black and white as that she wants to see it in black and white because “t’s easier when things are black and white. Erskine takes that tragedy and makes it so much worse, because of how Caitlin processes the world around her.

Mockingbird by kathryn erskine movie