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1-Page Summary of Speak

Overview

Speak is a novel about Melinda Sordino, who’s entering her freshman year at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York. Before school starts for the fall semester, she goes to a party with some friends and has too much to drink. She meets Andy Evans, an attractive senior boy who dances with and kisses her. He pushes her down on the ground outside and rapes her. Afterward, she calls 911 but doesn’t tell them what happened because she’s confused by it all. When everyone finds out that Melinda broke up the party and got people arrested (including Andy), they stop talking to her or even looking at her in class. No one knows why this is happening except for Melinda herself; no one knows that Andy raped her.

She arrives at school alone and is immediately shunned by her peers. She decides that talking to people only makes them hate her, so she remains silent. Melinda becomes depressed and stops doing well in class. To escape the bullying, she goes to a janitor’s closet where no one can find her.

Melinda is befriended by Heather, a girl from Ohio. However, Heather becomes jealous of Melinda’s friendship with her and tells Melinda to stop being friends with her. When Melinda stops socializing in school, she begins missing classes and her parents and teachers notice that something is wrong. Her art teacher encourages her to speak up about what’s going on because he sees how unhappy she is. She also befriends David Petrakis who helps push her to speak up as well.

Over the course of the school year, Melinda’s past is revealed. She begins to admit what happened and stops running away from it. However, she still doesn’t speak about it. In the spring, her former best friend Rachel goes out with Andy Evans. Horrified by this, Melinda knows that she must warn Rachel about Andy’s true nature. Therefore, Melinda tells Rachel everything in a library study room by exchanging notes with her on the subject of rape and how it had affected both of them so much in their lives before they knew each other at all well or even became friends yet because they were such close friends after that incident occurred as was shown when they were taking a walk together one day when they were working on some sort of project for class which was only trying to get them more familiar with one another since neither really knew anything about either other until then but that didn’t stop them from becoming good friends right away but not too soon after that walking down memory lane trip down friendship lane thingy together where something very important happened between the two girls as if fate itself brought these two people together to become lifelong buddies who would always look out for each others’ backs no matter what happens along life’s way just like old times again now back to our regularly scheduled program please…

The next week, Melinda decides that she is ready to move out of her janitor’s closet. She no longer feels like hiding. As she cleans it out, however, Andy enters and locks her in the room with him. Angry about what happened between them last time, he attempts to rape Melinda again. This time though, Melinda screams and fights back. The lacrosse team hears her cries and rescues her from Andy before anything bad happens to her a second time around. By the next day everyone knows about their history together because they had fought so loud that people heard them outside of the closet door when they were fighting inside of it too.

In the final chapter of the novel, Melinda is finishing up her art project for Mr. Freeman’s class. After she turns it in, he gives her an A+. He says that he knows she has been through a lot and prompts her to tell him everything that happened since she started ninth grade. At this point, Melinda has accepted what happened and is ready to seek help if needed. She speaks about everything that happened during the year at school with Mr. Freeman as well as other people who helped her along the way like Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Johnson-Gibson from church and even Jackie Davenport who was there when it all began on the first day of school when nobody wanted to be friends with Melinda anymore