East Linfield

East Linfield is Poppy Wright’s hometown, but it is not simply a place of childhood nostalgia. It is bound to the isolation she experienced at school, the family home she feared others would judge, and the difficult task of telling Alex Nilsen about the past. Later, the prospect of returning with Alex changes the meaning of home: East Linfield remains marked by old hurts, yet becomes a place they might approach together rather than one Poppy must face alone.

Identity and Background

Poppy identifies herself as being from East Linfield when she meets Alex during college orientation. He says he comes from West Linfield, a town in Ohio; the shared connection surprises her, though she initially regards the two Linfields as little more than an incidental point in common. Alex brightens at the discovery, hinting at a significance she does not yet understand. Their hometowns help establish an unexpected connection between two strangers whose other points of contact have been campus tours, city-life panels, and their dislike of each other’s clothes.

East Linfield also means Poppy’s family home. When Alex first comes to collect her for karaoke during their first summer of friendship, she tries to shield him from both her family and the house. She knows him well enough to imagine that their small, crowded home—with its knickknacks, dusty picture frames, and dog dander—might make him uncomfortable. More painfully, she worries that he will judge her parents. She knows they are loving, despite being messy, strange, loud, and blunt, but has learned that visitors may see the family differently when they cross the threshold. The town is therefore connected not only to Poppy’s childhood but also to her fear that the people and circumstances she loves will be misread.

School and the Fear of Returning

The strongest source of Poppy’s dread of East Linfield is her experience at school. She jokes that no force could drag her into the halls of East Linfield High, and Alex responds that her bullies have probably graduated. Her answer—that this cannot be known for sure—keeps the exchange comic on the surface, while exposing how little distance she feels from the people who hurt her. Graduation has not made the prospect of returning feel safe.

Poppy’s account of those years accumulates through specific humiliations. In seventh grade, braces and a bowl cut followed after Kim Leedles put gum in her hair; Kim then told the class that anyone who spoke to Poppy would lose an invitation to a birthday party still five months away. In ninth grade, after a brief change in how her classmates treated her, Jason Stanley kissed her unexpectedly. When Poppy did not want him, he spread a false sexual story about her. The soccer team called her Porny Poppy for about a year, and other students avoided her. These memories make East Linfield more than a backdrop: it is the place Poppy associates with being made into a story by others and then left socially isolated.

Telling Alex What Happened

For a time, Poppy does not want Alex to see her as Linfield Poppy. She worries that knowledge of her hometown self might alter the private world the two have built together. Their conversation comes during the last night of junior-year classes, after they return from a party to Alex’s dorm and discover that his roommate has already left for the summer. Poppy borrows one of Alex’s T-shirts and blankets and sleeps on a spare twin bed. They talk with their eyes closed, continuing until they drift off mid-sentence, in a sleepover that recalls the intimacy of childhood.

Alex first tells her about his mother’s death, his father’s grief, and the care he took of his younger brothers. When he asks why Poppy dreads going home for the summer, she tells him what happened, beginning with seventh grade. The contrast matters: after hearing Alex share painful family history, Poppy might have felt her own experiences were too small to disclose, but his response makes her feel neither petty nor diminished. East Linfield’s history enters their friendship not as an embarrassment Alex confirms, but as a truth he makes room for. Poppy comes to understand that being known by him need not mean being reduced to her reputation there.

Home Reimagined

The novel later places East Linfield among the different spaces through which Poppy and Alex negotiate belonging. In New York, they leave a tour halfway through to visit Cafe Lalo, and Poppy finds that ordinary life with Alex can feel like a vacation without a return date. The feeling coexists with work, lesson planning, grading, laundry, dishes, taxes, dentist appointments, and lost MetroCards. Their shared home is not free of routine; its significance lies in living that routine together. Against this everyday intimacy, a return to their hometown is no longer only a return to the past.

Poppy imagines their next summer beginning with four days in Norway and four in Sweden, then continuing in Linfield for the rest of Alex’s summer break. They would stay in Betty’s house while Alex repaired it; Poppy would sit on the floor eating Twizzlers and trying to make him blush. They would remove wallpaper, choose paint, have diet soda with Alex’s family, and sit with Poppy’s parents looking over the remnants of Wright family cars. The imagined visit is practical as well as romantic: they would try living in their hometown as they have tried living in New York, and see how it fits. Poppy already knows the emotional answer she gives herself: wherever Alex is will be her favorite place. East Linfield’s significance thus shifts from a place she dreads returning to into a possible setting for a shared life—not because its past has disappeared, but because her sense of home now includes the person who heard it.