Chapter 21: Imogen Confronts the Fear of Queerbaiting
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Imogen jolts awake, her heart pounding, still reeling from Lili’s “Unless you want me to be” comment. She feels untethered in the white noise of the room while Lili sleeps peacefully. Imogen immediately labels herself a horrible person, convinced that the “Tessa thing” is worse than normal lying—she believes she is queerbaiting or at least appropriating queerness. She accuses herself of treating queerness as a thought exercise, a straight girl who mistakes a lesbian’s existence for a love declaration.
Worse, Imogen realizes this isn’t the first time she’s had such feelings. She recalls a girl named Nisha Khatoon from the track team who joined Pride Alliance meetings. Imogen felt a suspenseful curiosity when Nisha introduced herself, but she insists it wasn’t a crush—she simply wanted to be her friend. Imogen also remembers an unnamed girl with a bleached pixie cut who ordered butterscotch waffle cones at Seneca Farms, the ice cream shop where Imogen worked with Lili. The girl wore a “le dollar bean” shirt, signaling her queerness. Imogen used to count people in line hoping to serve her, sometimes wondering if the girl noticed her back. She describes this as a daydream she carried but never acted on, like something she forgot to pay for.
Imogen concludes that her past attractions to girls never felt like the thunderstorm of feelings she had for boys. Instead, they felt like the lingering sensation after finishing a good book—intriguing but not consuming. She now fears that her brain has been using queerness as a toy, and that she is a “certified asshole straight girl” who sees a lesbian and thinks it’s a love declaration.
Key Events
- Imogen wakes up in a panic, her mind replaying Lili’s “unless you want me to be” statement.
- She mentally labels herself guilty of queerbaiting and appropriating queerness.
- Imogen recalls two past instances: Nisha Khatoon at Pride Alliance and the butterscotch waffle cone girl at Seneca Farms.
- She distinguishes these past feelings from boy-crushes by describing them as less electric, more like a book’s afterglow.
- The chapter ends with her self-recrimination: she sees herself as a straight girl stealing queer experiences.
Character Development
Imogen
This chapter marks a turning point in Imogen’s self-awareness. She moves from enjoying the “Imogen, Obviously” ruse to interrogating her own motives. Her guilt suggests a moral conscience that fears inauthenticity and harm to others. By separating her past attractions to girls from crushes on boys, she begins to question the binary she has always assumed. Yet she can’t yet accept that those feelings might be real—she dismisses them as thought experiments or borrowed daydreams. This internal conflict sets the stage for her eventual reckoning with her sexuality.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
Queerbaiting vs. Real Attraction
Imogen’s central worry is that she is unfairly performing queerness for attention. The chapter uses her past memories to blur the line between performance and genuine feeling.
The “Book Afterglow” Metaphor
Imogen compares her interest in queer girls to the feeling after finishing a book—something she can’t shake but also doesn’t own. This motif suggests her attraction is intellectual or emotional rather than physical, but also hints she might be in denial.
Appropriation vs. Discovery
The chapter repeatedly uses language of taking (borrowing, stealing, forgetting to pay) to describe Imogen’s relationship with queerness. This theft imagery reinforces her guilt but also prepares the reader for a later revelation that she wasn’t borrowing—she was finding something already hers.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 21 is the emotional and thematic hinge of the novel. Up to this point, Imogen has been swept along by Lili’s plan for the weekend. Now, alone in the dark with her thoughts, she confronts the ethical weight of the lie. The chapter is almost entirely internal monologue, a compressed crisis of identity. It also introduces the crucial pattern of Imogen’s past attractions to queer girls, which the book will later reframe as evidence of her own queerness. Without this chapter, her final acceptance of a bisexual identity would lack foundation.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Imogen believe her feelings for girls are different from her crushes on boys?
She describes boy crushes as an electric, all-consuming thunderstorm, while her interest in girls feels like the lingering sensation after finishing a book—intriguing but not blaringly loud. She uses this contrast to convince herself her attraction to girls isn’t real.
2. What does Imogen mean by “appropriating queerness”?
She thinks she is a straight girl who treats queerness as a toy or thought exercise—borrowing the aesthetics and feelings without actually being queer. She specifically fears she is “queerbaiting” by acting as if Tessa’s existence is a sign of mutual interest.
3. How does the butterscotch waffle cone girl episode illustrate Imogen’s internal conflict?
Imogen recalls hoping to serve this girl and wondering if the girl noticed her. Yet she frames the entire memory as a daydream she “forgot to pay for,” refusing to claim it as a genuine crush. This shows her pattern of dismissing queer attraction as borrowed fantasy rather than authentic self.