Andrew Anthony PoS 125-245

     In my opinion, this section of the book has been one of the more eventful and moving sections we have read. They are some key events that happen early on in the section. It starts off with Lauren's dad going missing. Lauren and many others go consistently search for him day in and day out, but do not find anything. This leads them to assume that he is dead. Lauren starts to realize that she is slowly losing her family. With the "death" of her father, she is set back in her plans to leave Robledo because she feels she cannot leave the rest of her family in the state of need that they are in. Lauren then decides that she will help her family get back on their feet, and then she will go north. That was the plan until things started "heating up."

     The next major event comes in the middle of the night. Lauren, as well as the rest of Robledo, are awoken by smoke, flames, gunshots, and chaos. Their walls have been breached by a group of men with painted faces who are believed to be pyro addicts. They have set fire to the neighborhood and are killing for personal pleasure. It is terrible to think that these men represent small terrorist groups that really do exist and do these things in third world countries. This group of face painted men burn down a majority of the houses, kill anyone they feel like killing, and rape pretty much any woman they come in contact with. Lauren believes that this was caused by the drug pyro, which causing a high when dealing with fire. During the chaos Lauren is separated from Cory and her brothers, but she escapes and hides for the night until it is safe to go back. She goes to the remains of her house the next day to gather any supplies she can (clothes, any food from the garden, and the money from the lemon tree.) She sees many familiar faces in the dead bodies scattered in the streets, but non of them are her family's. She then runs into Zahra Moss and Harry Balter, and Zahra informs Lauren that she witnessed Cory and her brothers being killed. So just like that, Lauren now has no family left. But, if you go back to the beginning of chapter 14, there is the phrase, "In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn." Butler might have put this in the beginning of chapter 14 to literally foreshadow that Robledo was going to burn, but she might have also meant that Lauren, now having lost her home and her whole family, has burned and will now star to rise from her ashes. butler may be hinting that things are going to get better for Lauren.

     This may look to be true. Lauren, Harry, and Zahra decide to stick together and head north. They use the money they have to buy supplies they need and use the freeways as their routes to head north towards Canada. During their travels, Lauren decides to tell Harry and Zahra about her sharing. This is the first time she has told anyone about it. At nights she worries of possible horrors that could happen, but things are starting to look up for Lauren.