Forget Me Not

Calli’s mom is a single mother who regularly falls into and out of dating relationships, moving their family each time she breaks up with a boyfriend. This trait frames the structure of the novel, which begins and ends with moving. Calli’s mom is impulsive, deciding to move their family quickly. They move to St. George, Utah, in the opening pages of the novel; Calli does not know about the move ahead of time, and she wakes up to her things already packed. Calli’s mom often frames their circumstances in terms of how she’s affected, not necessarily how Calli is affected. For example, after she cuts Calli’s hair, she’s glad that it will take Calli less time to get ready in the morning. Calli reveals to the reader that they are regularly late because of her mother, not because of Calli’s hair care routine. Furthermore, after Calli’s first day of school, she walks to her mom’s job at the flower shop and takes a seat at her mother’s work station. Calli’s mom’s first words to Calli are to tell her to move seats, to give Calli’s mom more work space.

Calli’s mom leaves her to stay with their next-door neighbors when she goes on a trip to Las Vegas for a work convention, and when she returns, she’s married to a person whom Calli has never met. Terry leaves the significant events of Calli’s mom meeting Reno and their marriage to emphasize the lack of control that Calli feels in her life. Calli’s mom tells her that they will move by the end of the week and is impatient with Calli when Calli wants to spend more time with Jinsong. After Calli fights with her mom over their conflict, and over Calli’s self-inflicted thumb injury, Calli and her mom don’t speak for a few days. When Calli’s mom apologizes, she still cannot promise that she won’t move their family again; however, she does allow Calli to visit Jinsong over the summer. It is unclear at the end of the novel whether Calli’s mom has experienced any real character change, but Calli’s summer trip to see Jinsong suggests that her mother may be attempting to understand Calli’s feelings.

Jinsong P’eng is the deuteragonist. He is a Chinese American middle schooler who plays baseball. He is also the student council president of his school. At the start of the novel, Jinsong is immediately interested in Calli, but when his friends openly mock Calli for her tics at school, he is embarrassed of her and pretends not to know her. Jinsong is conflicted: He wants to be Calli’s friend and to be a good student council president, but he also doesn’t want to be bullied by his friends for liking Calli. Terry explores the intersection of forms of oppression through Jinsong; he empathizes with the ableism that Calli experiences because he remembers children being racist toward him when he was younger, and this memory causes him to fear further conflict. He decides to be Calli’s friend at home but not at school. At the midpoint of the novel, Calli is injured trying to suppress a tic during class, and Jinsong stays quiet. He doesn’t defend her, and he doesn’t help her. Terry uses his internal conflict to represent The Many Faces of Bullying in Schools. Jinsong buys flowers to apologize, but Calli puts them in the garbage disposal. Jinsong feels guilty and is certain that Calli no longer wants to be his friend.

Terry portrays Jinsong’s major character development when Calli and the P’engs go to a carnival: Jinsong apologizes for being embarrassed of Calli and stands up for her in front of their classmates. Jinsong hopes that he can be Calli’s friend and not lose his own friends. The next day at school, Duncan and Nyle continue to mock Calli, so Jinsong punches them in the face; this is the most dramatic expression of his internal conflict in the novel. That afternoon, Calli tells him that her mom is planning to move their family to Las Vegas, and Jinsong learns that he’s no longer student council president. Jinsong’s fear of losing his friends and his position has come true, but instead of being distraught, he’s proud that he stood up for Calli. On Calli’s last day, he kisses her and she gives him her email so that they can keep in touch. Jinsong’s action of remembering Calli hence answers the wish to “forget me not” in the novel’s title. He emails her that afternoon and then again to tell her that he’s made better friends and made the Little League team. Calli tells him that she plans to visit, and she can spend time with him and the new friends together.