Paper Towns: Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Quentin arrives at the strip mall to find that someone has been there since his last visit; the particleboard window-covering has been repaired where he and his friends broke it. He realizes that the back doors have no hinges, and enters the building. Wandering among the desks in the abandoned office, he notices that one of the calendars is different from the others. While all the other calendars are turned to February, this one is turned to June. Quentin inspects the desk more closely and discovers a bottle of red nail polish. The color is immediately recognizable to him — this is the polish Margo used to paint her nails during their adventure. Examining the bottle, he finds a smudge of blue spray paint that he is sure came from Margo’s fingers.

Quentin is convinced that Margo has been staying in the mall, and resolves to stay there until she returns. The idea of sleeping in the rat-infested building disgusts him, and he is a scared by the creaking and darkness of the building, but he is thrilled by the knowledge that Margo has been alive in these rooms.

Quentin pokes through the different rooms, and finds only one that seems as though someone has been living in it, an empty room with a rolled-up carpet in the corner. He notices thumbtack holes in the wall and finds an empty box that once contained nutrition bars. The thought of Margo, sitting alone on the rolled-up carpet and eating a nutrition bar, makes Quentin sad in how lonely and unlike Margo it seems. He finds a blanket rolled in the carpet that still smells of Margo’s lotion and shampoo.

Quentin realizes he cannot know why Margo chose to come to this place, or why she chose to leave. He sees that he cannot know these things, because he does not know who Margo really is— he only knows how she acted in front of other people.

Quentin checks in with his father, telling him that he will be spending the night at Ben’s house after prom. He lays on the floor, looking at the sky through cracks in the ceiling, and thinks how strange it is that Margo, who seemed to hate being bored, should choose to be in a place where there was no internet, television, or music. His boredom ultimately leads Quentin back to “Song of Myself,” which he has brought with him. For the first time, he finds that he can read the poem and make sense of it.

Quentin lingers over one part of “Song of Myself” in which a child asks the poet what grass is. Whitman gives many answers: that the grass is an image of his own hopefulness, of the greatness of God, of the essential equality and connectedness of people, and of death. Quentin cannot figure out which of these ideas is most important to Whitman’s message, and the multiplicity of the metaphor leads him to think about the different ways he has imagined and mis-imagined Margo.

Quentin realizes that the most important question is not what happened to Margo, but who she was. He commits himself to correcting his misperceptions about Margo, and begins hunting more carefully through the rooms around him to discover things he might have missed on his first visit. He finds a stack of travel books with dog-eared pages, and it occurs to him that Margo may have been planning to travel. He spends the night reading these books. Though he has no idea where Margo might have gone, the presence of these books makes Quentin believe she is alive. This gives him comfort and a sense of purpose.