“What does it matter”

“What does it matter?” is a recurring question in which indifference becomes both a defense and an accusation. Its variations pass among Susan Reynolds, Thom Wright, Debbie Schaffer, and Bret Ellis, gathering force as a question about what deserves feeling: a strained romance, the demands of Homecoming, or the death of Matt Kellner, which Bret believes his friends barely care to understand.

A quarrel made audible

During preparations for the Homecoming float, Bret watches Thom and Susan argue under a stadium light, far enough away that their gestures are visible but their words are not. Susan stands with her arms crossed, listening in a withdrawn silence; Thom’s agitation appears confused and pleading. The distance makes their dispute look at first like a private rupture glimpsed from outside. Bret’s dread grows as he watches Robert Mallory decorating a cardboard palm tree, and he darkly wonders whether Robert knows what is happening between the couple.

The argument breaks through that distance when Susan shouts, “Tell me, Thom,” and asks how it matters. Thom answers with an accusation of his own, demanding to know what is wrong with her. Susan repeats the question in the sharper form “Why does it matter?” Thom says that it matters because he loves her. Susan rejects that explanation: love is not what she is talking about. The exchange does not clarify the source of her anger; instead, it makes the gap between Thom’s appeal to love and Susan’s refusal to accept it newly public.

The phrase as pressure

Later, in the restroom, Debbie lists the Homecoming game, parade, dinner, and party as events Susan is expected to attend. Bret, frustrated by Susan’s resistance, turns the refrain against her. He says it is only one more year and tells her to stop being difficult, endure the occasion, and sit on the float. His impatience treats participation as a small obligation that should not require explanation.

Susan answers that when she once said it was only one more year, she meant Bret and his situation—not herself or the two of them together. The distinction deflates him. In this exchange, the question of what matters is not merely whether Homecoming is important: it is also who is being asked to endure it, and whether a reassurance offered to one friend can fairly be used to dismiss another’s reluctance.

Debbie then takes up the phrase while arguing with Susan. She asks what it really matters, says Susan’s refusal makes her look like a bitch, and urges her to do it anyway. The cigarette passes between the two women as Debbie speaks and Susan listens without answering. Bret recognizes that he is not meant to be part of their conversation; when he leaves, their voices become an urgent, muffled whisper. The refrain has helped mark the boundary of the private matter as much as it has pressed Susan to comply.

Indifference and consequence

Bret leaves angry that the dispute over whether Susan will be Homecoming Queen commands more feeling than Matt’s mysterious death. His reaction gives the expression a darker measure: “What does it matter?” can sound like impatience with a social obligation, but it also echoes the group’s apparent failure to face a death Bret considers consequential. Homecoming continues to claim the characters’ attention while Matt’s fate remains obscure.

The aftermath of the field argument reinforces the tension between rupture and performance. The students return to work on the float as if nothing has happened, though they are shaken by the first visible fracture in the couple’s relationship of more than two years. Bret sees Robert walking close beside Thom, speaking while Thom listens and occasionally nods. The scene supplies no confirmation of what Robert knows; it leaves Bret’s suspicion attached to the same uncertainty that surrounds the quarrel.

The wording resurfaces at a later confrontation, when Thom challenges Susan’s explanation that she was in the house with Debbie. He calls her a liar, and Susan screams back, “What does it fucking matter?” The question now comes amid accusation rather than a debate over school rituals. Across these scenes, its repetition does not settle what matters or reconcile the speakers. Instead, it exposes how a demand for explanation can meet withdrawal, how one person’s appeal can become another’s pressure, and how unresolved conflict persists even when the surrounding party or school routine carries on.