50 pages • 1 hour read
Now Is Not the Time to Panic
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“Mazzy Brower”-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Mazzy Brower” Summary
The novel opens with Frances “Frankie” Budge answering the telephone. The voice on the other end is unfamiliar and calls Frankie by her full name, causing Frankie to believe it is merely a telemarketer. Before Frankie can hang up, the caller quickly recites a strange phrase, and Frankie joins in the recitation. The caller gives her name—Mazzy Brower—and explains that she is a journalist writing a piece on the Coalfield Panic of 1996 and is nearly certain that Frankie is responsible for the panic. After some hesitation, Frankie admits she was indeed responsible, or at least partly. Mazzy wants to meet to discuss the event further, but Frankie ends the call. As she watches her young daughter, Junie, play drums, she is fearful of what is about to transpire.
Chapter 1 Summary
At the Coalfield Public Pool, Frankie Budge and Zeke Brown meet. Frankie explains the pool’s tradition of covering a watermelon in Vaseline and then dropping it into the pool; swimmers compete to push the watermelon to the pool’s edge. Frankie is uninterested in the competition, but Zeke asks her to team up with him. Zeke explains that he is new to Coalfield and has observed that Frankie appears to be alone. Frankie refuses to join him, so Zeke attempts to fight for the watermelon alone. After watching Zeke be kicked and dunked by his competitors, Frankie asks her triplet brothers to help him win. They are skeptical but agree to do so after Frankie offers them 20 dollars. The three boys take possession of the watermelon, then “[throw] Zeke onto it” and “[push] him to the edge of the water” (12). After winning the watermelon, Zeke asks Frankie who the boys are, then immediately realizes that she convinced them to assist him in winning. Zeke invites Frankie to eat the watermelon with him, and, though she is initially disgusted by the idea, she joins in.
Chapter 2 Summary
Frankie spends the summer days alone at home, bored. Zeke, to whom she has given her address, bikes over two days after the watermelon event. Frankie is unsure how they will fill the time together, and initially they sit quietly watching horror movies and eating Pop-Tarts. Zeke eventually breaks the silence, asking Frankie about the town of Coalfield and how she spends her time. He explains that his mother has moved him from Memphis to their grandmother’s home, just a few blocks from Frankie’s. His father’s infidelity drove them there, and Zeke is unsure whether their move will be permanent. Frankie reveals that her father also had an affair and now lives with his new wife and their daughter (also named Frances, after their shared grandmother). Frankie tells Zeke that she is a writer, revealing that she is writing a Nancy Drew-style novel—a detail she has kept secret. Zeke, an aspiring comic-book artist, proposes that the two devote the summer to making art. Frankie is reluctant, but then warms to the idea. The two head to Hardee’s for lunch in Frankie’s car after Frankie says one of her brothers (employed there for the summer) can provide them with free food.
Chapter 3 Summary
Frankie and Zeke spend a few days together, but quickly grow bored. Zeke proposes they find something fun to do, and Frankie worries that he may have sex in mind. She thinks about her lack of close friends and acknowledges that she views herself as weird and different from her peers. Frankie says she has an idea that may interest Zeke and shows him a broken photocopier in her family’s garage. She explains her brothers stole the machine but then broke it after using it to photocopy their backsides as a prank. Frankie wonders if they could use the machine to make some kind of art, though she is skeptical that the machine can be repaired when Zeke proposes they attempt to fix it. After some effort, he discovers the machine is not broken but merely jammed with paper. The two brainstorm how they might use the machine to make unique art, experimenting by photocopying various items they find in the garage. They decide to try photocopying their faces, so they place their heads side by side on the machine’s glass. On the second attempt, Frankie kisses Zeke. He asks her why she did this, and she explains that she has never kissed anyone and felt as though the act of making art would be an appropriate circumstance for doing so. Zeke concedes that he too has never kissed anyone and, after Frankie apologizes for failing to ask permission, changes the subject back to the photocopier.
Chapter 4 Summary
The two spend the days together making art: Frankie writes her novel while Zeke draws cartoons. Sometimes they make magazine collages or engage in antics such as applying all the perfume samples from the magazines onto themselves at once. Occasionally the two kiss. One day their kissing is interrupted when Frankie’s mother suddenly arrives. Frankie’s mother chats with Zeke, joking about Frankie keeping him a secret. She invites Zeke to stay for dinner later, and he agrees, noting that his own mother is preoccupied and will not mind if he is absent.
He and Frankie then return to making art, attempting to distort photos by cutting and photocopying them. But Frankie is unsatisfied after using a photo of her parents, saying she would not want her mother to see the results. Zeke feels they need to somehow make their art public, instead of using personal materials. He tells Frankie of the popularity of graffiti artists in Memphis and suggests they make a sort of graffiti-inspired poster to display around the town. Frankie is reluctant, not knowing anything about graffiti or having any idea of what she might write on such a poster. Zeke encourages her to write whatever comes to mind, not censoring herself or worrying about making meaning. Frankie thinks of her novel and the secret hideout of her protagonist, which she has termed “The Edge.” The phrase “the edge” repeats in Frankie’s mind, until she writes the sentences: “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us” (38). Both she and Zeke find the sentences compelling and are excited by them. The two kiss.
Chapter 5 Summary
Frankie and Zeke make a poster using her words: Frankie writes the sentences and Zeke draws a shantytown-like scene below two large hands. He stresses that no one can know that he and Frankie are the creators, and insists they must do something to “make it [theirs]” (43). The two each cut themselves with an X-Acto knife to drip blood onto the paper. Frankie unintentionally makes her cut a bit too deep, and Zeke wraps her wound with his shirt. The two kiss while they wait for the blood to dry on the paper, find a bandage for Frankie’s cut, and then photocopy the poster. They make 120 total copies, each taking half. Zeke instructs Frankie to keep the original and reminds her never to show it to anyone.
Later, Frankie’s mom arrives with pizza for dinner, and Frankie thinks about how relaxed her mother has become since the divorce from Frankie’s father. She asks about Frankie’s bandaged finger and Zeke’s cut, asking whether the two have partaken in a blood oath. Both invent lies to explain their respective injuries. Over dinner, Frankie’s mom asks Zeke about himself and discovers that Zeke’s mother is a former classmate whom she instantly remembers. His mother—Cydney Hudson, now Cydney Brown—was a violin prodigy who attended Juilliard. The conversation is interrupted by Frankie’s bother Andrew asking whether the two are “boyfriend and girlfriend” (50). Both Frankie and Zeke deny this, stressing that Zeke is merely a temporary summer friend.
After dinner, they head to Coalfield town square to put up the posters but realize that they will first need supplies to hang them. They head to Walmart to purchase a staple gun, staples, duct tape, and pushpins, and then affix a poster to a public bulletin board as they exit the store. They hang 63 posters around the town, then part, agreeing to continue to display the posters all summer.
That night, Frankie’s mother awakens her. She is worried that Frankie and Zeke might engage in sex and wants Frankie to promise her that, if they do so, Frankie will insist upon using protection. She forces Frankie to accept a box of condoms, and, despite her protestations, Frankie eventually agrees.
“Mazzy Brower”-Chapter 5 Analysis
The connection between Frankie and Zeke develops quickly as they realize their commonalities. Both are social outcasts who find themselves alone and bored. Social pressure to fit in among the others is evident at the public pool, and Frankie’s loner status is one Zeke instantly recognizes. Though Zeke hails from a city rather than a small town like Frankie, the infidelity of their fathers unites them. Most importantly, their first meeting establishes the theme of Misfits and Social Norms, as their mutual “weirdness” lays the foundation for their friendship. Zeke’s interest in comic books garners him the label of outcast; similarly, Frankie enjoys reading books that her peers would not approve of. Both sense that it is best to keep their interests private to avoid scrutiny or ridicule. In this way, their passions dovetail with the theme of The Power of Secrets present throughout the novel. That each teen reveals their respective secrets to one another (Zeke’s art and Frankie’s novel in process) indicates a mutual trust. The exchange of such secrets serves to accelerate their friendship.
Similarly, foreshadowing figures prominently in this section, initially via Mazzy Brower’s phone call, as adult Frankie is certain something awful will result from the knowledge Mazzy has. Indeed, the secrecy around the events of the summer of 1996 not only serves to pique the reader’s interest but suggests that secrets can be harmful or dangerous and that they cannot remain hidden forever.
Sexual tension contributes to the novel’s conflict in these early chapters. Frankie is anxious about what she perceives to be her general disinterest in having sex. Initially, she does not feel a physical attraction toward Zeke. Yet she trusts him, feels comfortable in his presence, and regards him as someone safe with whom she can get the business of a first teenage kiss out of the way. That teenage sexuality can be a source of embarrassment becomes evident when Frankie’s mother interrupts their kissing and when Frankie’s brother inquires about their dating status. Importantly, the absence of her father and his infidelity leaves Frankie reluctant to forge a romantic relationship. Because she has neglected to tell her family that she is spending time with Zeke, her relationship with him becomes yet another secret, albeit one that she keeps subconsciously.
The creation of the poster is a key plot point. Their initial attempts at making art—experimenting with photocopying objects and distorted photographs and creating collages from magazine pages—all fail when both teens find them uninspiring and unimportant. It is Zeke who insists that they must create something to be displayed publicly for the creation to have meaning. Their discussion of how meaning is conferred upon art raises the theme of Art and the Role of the Artist, which they will both grapple with throughout the novel. That he is knowledgeable of graffiti art and other contemporary trends gives him an authority that Frankie does not have, causing her to trust his instinct. In this way, Zeke is experienced and worldly in a way that Frankie admires.
Importantly, Zeke insists that the phrase Frankie writes for the poster must be “something really weird. Like a mystery or a riddle that no one can solve. And it’ll drive the whole town crazy” (36). This mandate is ironic after the fact, as the words do indeed spawn exactly what Zeke hopes they will, though not in a manner either teen anticipates at the time. Just as significantly, a phrase from Frankie’s secret novel is instrumental in inspiring the poster. That they both find Frankie’s words and Zeke’s images to be compelling further cements their friendship and common artistic sensibilities. Their adding drops of blood is an action infused with great significance for teenagers, bonding themselves to one another in a seemingly irreversible way.
Zeke and Frankie assert themselves as artists and declare their creation worthy of the title of “art.” They understand art’s potential to be viewed as subversive as evidenced by their agreement to keep its authorship a secret, both key themes throughout the novel. This is further evidenced as they display the poster around Coalfield, regarding themselves as true fugitives in their quest to buy the supplies from Walmart, fearful they will be caught, as if the supplies are contraband. They are careful to assert control over the poster, though this control will ultimately be lost as the poster becomes ubiquitous.
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