86-125 Reading... Kaitlyn Weston

During the second part of this book, I couldn’t stop reading.  I just continued to turn one page after the other because everything became so intense and real.  The tragedy of Keith leaving the gates only to return a bloody mess, was just the first of the worries for the Olamina family.  Next the terrible times continued as Keith left the gates again, but this time with his mother’s gun.  Keith continued this stealing rampage when he came home with rolls of money that clearly weren’t his.  Then the family had the biggest disaster of all: identifying Keith’s body.  The family is being torn apart.  As Lauren states, “He messed up our family, broke it into something less than a family” (115).  Lauren never really talked or got along with Cory on a normal basis, but now that Keith is gone the talking is even less.  Lauren gets looks of disgust and hate from Cory as if Lauren had something to do with Keith’s death.  While Cory is crying, Lauren tries to comfort her yet she still continues to receive deadly looks.  Cory’s crying shows just how much she cared about Keith, yet Lauren and her father didn’t cry.  Lauren doesn’t know why she didn’t cry; she’s feels as though she didn’t have to cry for Keith, but she also felt that her father should cry for him. 
My questions from the first part of this book still stand without answers: Do bad things really happen every day and will Laruen ever feel happiness? I feel that the farther I read into this book the more that Lauren experiences horrible things.  Maybe she can escape the madness by moving to the other community even though her and her father think it is a horrible idea.