Violet Markey and Brenda Shank-Kravitz

Violet Markey and Brenda Shank-Kravitz’s friendship becomes one of Violet’s strongest connections after the deaths that reshape her life. It is made through practical collaboration, frank conversation, and acts of loyalty that do not require Brenda to share Violet’s every feeling: she helps Violet make something new, gives her space when she is not ready to talk, and stands beside her in grief. Their bond ultimately belongs not to a story of forgetting, but to the work of carrying loss while returning to other people and to life.

From a lost voice to a new project

After Eleanor Markey dies, Violet stops updating EleanorandViolet.com, the online magazine the sisters began after moving to Indiana. The site had offered their contrasting perspectives on fashion, beauty, boys, books, and life, and an interview mention had tripled its following. Yet its popularity cannot make it feel usable to Violet: it was a project about sisters, and after the crash she feels that her words have died with Eleanor. This silence gives the later work with Brenda a particular weight. The new magazine does not replace the sisterly collaboration Violet has lost; it marks the possibility of making something again with someone else.

That possibility takes shape through Germ Magazine. Violet and Brenda stay up until four in the morning working on it, with Violet at her laptop and Brenda lying on the floor with her legs up the wall. Brenda imagines the magazine guiding readers into adulthood with frankness about sex, college, love, and what to do when boys behave badly. Violet asks whether they know what to do in those situations; Brenda admits that they do not. Their exchange makes the project’s voice less a claim to expertise than an invitation to be honest together. Its humor and candor are part of the friendship’s method: they can make plans without pretending to have all the answers.

Building Germ and a wider circle

The project soon draws a response. Violet receives fifteen emails from girls at school who want to contribute, and Brenda recognizes the unfamiliar experience of popularity. For Violet, whose earlier online identity is bound to the sister she lost, the attention also signals that she is creating something in her own present. Brenda is not merely an audience for that change; she is beside Violet in the late-night labor that helps bring it about.

Their connection also sits within Violet’s gradual return to social life. She spends an afternoon with Amanda Monk, later joins a larger group at The Quarry, and dances with friends and girls connected to Germ. Those gatherings do not erase grief, but they show Violet participating again in ordinary plans and shared time. On April 24, she goes to a movie with Brenda and accepts Brenda’s invitation to sleep over. Brenda wants to talk about Theodore Finch, but when Violet says she is trying to put him behind her, Brenda lets the subject rest. She still offers reassurance, telling Violet, “Just so you know, it’s not you. Whatever reason he had for leaving, it must have been a good one.” Her care combines attention with restraint: she expresses concern without demanding that Violet grieve on a timetable or explain what she cannot yet bear to discuss.

Loyalty under the pressure of grief

After Theodore Finch’s funeral, Violet continues sitting at lunch with Brenda and several other girls. Amanda Monk approaches and apologizes for calling Theodore a freak, adding that she has broken up with Gabe Romero. Brenda’s response reveals a more confrontational edge to her loyalty. Violet briefly thinks Brenda may hit Amanda, and admits to herself that she wants to see what would happen; instead, Brenda answers, “Too little, too late,” knocks against the table as she stands, takes her tray, and leaves.

The moment is not a simple reconciliation among the girls. Amanda’s apology reaches Violet, who thanks her, while Brenda refuses to treat the apology and breakup as sufficient. Her anger registers the hurt and judgment Theodore had faced, as well as the difficulty of deciding when an apology can repair anything. Brenda’s exit also leaves Violet to answer Amanda herself. Their friendship allows for that difference: Brenda can defend Violet and Theodore fiercely without taking away Violet’s own choice about how to respond.

A shared remembrance

Later, Violet invites Amanda and Ryan Cross to join Brenda and Charlie Donahue at the base of Purina Tower. The five climb to the top, sit in a circle, and hold candles. Brenda lights them one by one as each person says something about Theodore. When her turn comes, she recites a line from Herman Melville, identifies its author, and starts a playlist of Theodore’s favorite music, including Split Enz, the Clash, and Johnny Cash.

Brenda then dances, jumping with the exuberance of a child. Violet recognizes the movement as the flip-flapping she and Theodore once did together in the children’s section of Bookmarks. That memory makes the tribute both collective and intimate: Brenda’s gesture recalls a private part of Violet’s life with Theodore, while the music gives everyone present a way to remember him together. Brenda shouts along; the group laughs, and Violet is surprised by how long it has been since she laughed that way. Charlie Donahue, Amanda, and Ryan join the dancing, and Violet joins them too. The scene does not resolve her bereavement, but it shows her able to share a memory without being left alone inside it.

The shape of their friendship

Brenda becomes Violet’s closest friend, and the friendship’s importance lies in the range of things it can hold: work on a new magazine, uncertainty about adulthood, silence around Theodore when Violet needs it, anger when others have hurt him, and a public remembrance that turns into unplanned laughter. Brenda neither substitutes for Eleanor nor asks Violet to stop missing her sister or Theodore. Instead, she helps make room for other forms of connection. In the contrast between the abandoned sisterly website and the collaborative, still-imperfect Germ, the relationship marks a return of Violet’s voice—not as a recovery of what was lost, but as something she can begin to make with a friend.