Paper Towns: Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Quentin, now a senior at Winter Park High School in Orlando, arrives at school on a Wednesday morning. He learns from his best friend Ben Starling that another of their friends, Radar, has made plans to go to prom with a girl named Angela, whom neither of them has ever met. Quentin is disinterested in prom, but Ben is fixated on the idea of going. He updates Quentin on his efforts to find a prom date, which have been unsuccessful since nearly every girl in school has heard “the Bloody Ben story,” a nasty rumor started by Margo’s friend Becca Arrington when they were in the tenth grade. When Ben was hospitalized for a kidney infection, Becca told their classmates that the blood in his urine was actually a symptom of his chronic masturbation. The story has continued to haunt him ever since.

Quentin becomes distracted from the conversation when he sees Margo in the hall. She is standing with her boyfriend, the baseball player Jase Worthington, and appears to be laughing hysterically. He thinks of the escapades and adventures for which Margo is famous: the time she ran away to Mississippi, her brief career traveling with a circus, and her behind-the-scenes encounter with a famous band in St. Louis. Stories of these adventures circulate through the entire school, and though no one can believe they are real, they always prove true.

Ben and Quentin meet Radar in the hall. Radar deflects conversation about his relationship with Angela by talking about Omnictionary, a reference website he loves. Quentin and Radar joke about Ben’s prom prospects. Chuck Parson, an enormous and popular athlete, approaches Quentin and starts to harass him, asking what he knows about Margo and Jase. Quentin knows nothing of interest, since his friendship with Margo has stagnated over the years. Quentin and Radar leave for calculus. In his narration, Quentin remarks about how easy it was for him to amuse himself by talking about prom with his friends, and to feel as though nothing happening around him mattered much.

During lunch, Ben admits he wants to go to prom even though Quentin thinks the idea is stupid. He tells Quentin he has already been rejected by one potential date. A girl with dreadlocks approaches them, and Quentin realizes that this is Angela. Angela tells the boys that Radar — who has a different lunch period, and so is not with them — hasn’t invited her to his house, even though they’ve been dating for five weeks. She asks whether Radar is embarrassed of her, or whether his parents are weird. Quentin rushes to assure her that Radar’s parents are just overprotective. She leaves, apparently satisfied, and the boys wonder how long it will be until she learns the real reason that Radar hasn’t invited her to his house.

Talking with Radar after lunch, Quentin and Ben tell him about their conversation with Angela. They tease Radar about the real reason his for reluctance to bring his girlfriend home: his parents own the world’s largest collection of black Santas, and every surface in his house is covered with black Santa paraphernalia.

After school, Quentin follows the same unremarkable routine he follows every day, watching television and eating dinner with his parents. His days are boring, he thinks, but there is something pleasant about being bored. A little before midnight, however, the routine of the day is disrupted. Margo appears at his bedroom window and opens it, something she hasn’t done since the night after Robert Joyner died, nine years earlier. The window still has no screen.