Crank

Crank is Ellen Hopkins 's first novel, and the first novel in the Crank Trilogy.

Plot
Taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crank takes place the summer before and during the protagonist Kristina's junior year of high school. She is a straight-A honor roll student and is court ordered to visit her father for three weeks. Kristina meets the character Adam in Albuquerque, where she is staying with her father. Adam convinces Kristina to try Crank (Methamphetamine), or "the monster", but Kristina runs away the first time she tries it. She is attacked by three men, but before anything can happen to her she is saved by Adam. An antagonist, Lince, Adam’s girlfriend, sees him comforting Kristina and jumps off of a balcony in a suicide attempt. Kristina starts a relationship with Adam, but feels guilty about Lince. When the three weeks are over, Kristina goes back to Reno, Nevada, where her mother’s house is. Kristina is now addicted to Crank. In Reno, Kristina, now calling herself Bree, meets the characters Brendan and Chase at a water-park, and they exchange numbers. They both promise her Crank. Chase and Kristina begin to get closer to one another, and they begin dating, though not exclusively. Kristina goes to see the antagonist Brendan, asking for more Crank. Brendan drives them both out into the woods, where they get high together, and he starts to take off her clothes. When she says no, he becomes violent, claiming that he has “waited weeks,” so she should “put up and shut up”. He then starts ripping her clothes off and takes her virginity. Afterwards, Brendan takes her home and makes her pay for the drugs, even though he had just raped her. At home Kristina, still high and shaken up from the rape, writes a letter to the character Adam telling him she was raped. Soon though she abandons her letter and calls Chase to come over while her parents are out. Chase comes over and she tells him about Brendan before trying to persuade him to have sex with her. Chase says no, wanting to wait until she had healed from her rape. However, she does end up having sex with him later in the novel. Kristina gets caught hitchhiking by a cop and goes to Juvenile hall, where she gets a direct connection to a Meth lab in Mexico through an inmate. Once she is released from Juvenile hall, Kristina uses her mom’s Visa card to pay for the illegal narcotic, and she takes her new supply to her druggie friends on “The Avenue.” At this part of the novel, Kristina has become a drug dealer, which she describes as making her instantly more “popular.” Kristina now has a very large amount of Crank on her hands, so she is getting high even more often. This leads to her becoming more irritable, causing her relationship with her mom to become even more strained. Kristina is also not showing up to classes, because she is spending all of her time getting high and dealing drugs on “The Avenue”. The story continues with Kristina discovering she is pregnant, soon after Brendan had raped her. Kristina spends the following days going through the symptoms of drug withdrawal. During this time in the novel, she believes that Chase is the father, having had sex with Chase a couple of weeks after being raped. Although after going to Planned Parenthood, she realizes Brendan is actually the father. At this point in the novel, Kristina begins to struggle with deciding if she should go through with the pregnancy because she “Feared the uncertainty of choosing parenthood” and “Doubted [she] could give [her] baby away”. Kristina decides to have an abortion, but after feeling “A flutter in [her] belly,” the child moving, she decides to keep her baby. After making this decision, Kristina tells her mother and stepfather about her addiction to Crank and her pregnancy, although she does not reveal who the father is. The novel continues with Kristina giving birth to a baby boy described as healthy. The narrative ends with Kristina implying that she is still using drugs, but is trying to stop.

Characters

 * Kristina Georgia Snow, the protagonist of the novel, is “The daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, and never any trouble.”


 * Bree is the alter ego of Kristina. She is fearless and is more confident around boys than Kristina is even though they are the same person.


 * Marie Snow is Kristina’s mother, and is described as “distant in her midlife quest for fame”.


 * Wayne Allen Snow is Kristina’s father and has green “peculiar eyes” and nasty body odor. He is lazy and a slob, and spends most of the money he makes on drugs.


 * Adam is Kristina’s first boyfriend and love, who introduces her to drugs. He is described as a “white knight” with a “hot bod”.


 * Brendan is one of Kristina’s boyfriends, who ends up raping and impregnating her. He is described in the novel as “tall, handsome, and gainfully employed”.


 * Chase is the boyfriend Kristina falls in love with. He is described in many different ways throughout the novel. “Chase looked like a linebacker, one who didn’t play much in the sun-the freckles on his cranberry skin almost pulsed pain”.


 * Robyn is the somewhat friend of Kristina and later supplier of drugs for both of their addictions.


 * Scott is Kristina’s stepdad who feels very responsible for Kristina. He is described as “tall, lean, and great looking for 40”. Later in the book he is also described as smelling “depressingly clean”.


 * Lince is Adam’s girlfriend, and is a “golden-eyed wildcat” addicted to drugs and attempts suicide after seeing Kristina and Adam together, but failed to die.


 * Leigh is Kristina’s lesbian sister, who looks “Britney-ish” and cares about Kristina. Leigh takes care of Kristina when she has a tattoo infection


 * Hunter is Kristina’s son who is born at the end of the novel. He is described as beautiful, healthy, and an “old soul”


 * Trent is Kristina’s childhood friend and Robyn’s younger brother. He is openly gay and has been bullied because of his sexual preference.


 * Sarah is Kristina’s childhood friend. She is Irish, smart, talkative, and has red hair and freckles.