Lennie Walker and Sarah’s friendship

Lennie Walker and Sarah’s friendship is tested by Bailey Walker’s death and Lennie’s retreat into grief. Its repair does not come from Sarah claiming to understand everything Lennie feels; it begins when both admit how far they have grown apart, and when Sarah’s own mourning becomes visible. Their renewed closeness gives Lennie a friend who can ask difficult questions without reducing her grief to a simple explanation.

Friendship Under Strain

After Bailey’s death, Lennie keeps things from Sarah and cannot explain why she has become so closed off. The distance is not presented as a clean break: when the two talk beside the water, Sarah throws stones with more force than the moment seems to require and admits that she is angry with Lennie, though she feels she is not entitled to that anger. Lennie recognizes the feeling because she, too, has lately been angry with Bailey. The comparison shows how grief complicates even the closest attachments: love remains, but so do feelings that seem disloyal or forbidden.

Sarah names the cause of her own hurt more directly. Lennie has been keeping so much from her that Sarah no longer knows what to think. Lennie apologizes, but she cannot yet supply the explanation Sarah might want; she does not know why she has shut her out. Her promise that things will be different is therefore sincere but uncertain. Sarah’s answer is to tell Lennie she has news of her own, pointedly noting that Lennie did not ask how she was. Her account of hooking up with Luke Jacobus makes the exchange playful, but the dig also clarifies what has gone wrong: the friendship has become one-sided, with Lennie’s grief taking up so much space that Sarah’s life has receded from view.

Returning to Each Other

The distance is not permanent. Later, Sarah comes to Maria’s Deli after swimming, her hair still wet, and hugs Lennie over the counter. She has been at Flying Man’s with Luke, ostensibly working on a song. The ordinary details of her visit matter: she arrives with a life and a mood of her own, yet her first response to Lennie is physical warmth. Their friendship is resuming through familiar ease, even before Lennie has made the confession she is delaying.

That conversation turns toward Lennie’s involvement with Toby Shaw. Sarah asks why Lennie would do something she does not want and states plainly that Lennie does not love Toby, while recognizing that Lennie is deeply in love with Joe Fontaine. Sarah’s candor makes her a witness to the contradiction Lennie is living: her actions have become difficult to reconcile with what she feels. The questions are not detached judgment. Sarah wants to understand, and Lennie’s answers show that she can speak to Sarah about the entanglement rather than keep it entirely to herself.

Grief Made Mutual

When the two meet again, their glance carries weeks of unspoken conversation. Lennie admits that she had thought Sarah could no longer understand her. She had felt changed by Bailey’s death while Sarah seemed like the same person as before; looking back, Lennie sees that Bailey may have felt similarly about her. This recognition lets Lennie understand her withdrawal as part of a larger failure to see what grief was doing to other people, not proof that Sarah had ceased to matter.

Sarah answers without pretending to possess an easy remedy. She says that she could not truly understand and that she has felt useless; the books about grief she has read have seemed formulaic and unhelpful. Lennie thanks her for reading them, then realizes that Sarah may have read them for herself as well. Sarah revered Bailey and has lost her too. Lennie understands that she has left her friend to mourn alone, and reaches across the bench to hug her hard. The embrace makes the friendship’s repair reciprocal: Sarah has been trying to help Lennie, but she also needs room for her own grief.

Their moment is interrupted by Clover High students honking from a passing car. Sarah waves her feminist book at them, and Lennie laughs. The brief return of humor does not erase the sadness they have named; it gives them a way to be together inside it. Sarah soon returns to the unresolved question of Lennie and Toby, asking whether Lennie had been competitive with Bailey. Her curiosity connects the present confusion to the sisters’ relationship, but she does not assume the answer. The friendship can hold questions that Lennie has not yet settled.

A Continuing Confidante

Sarah remains important to Lennie after their first honest exchange. When Lennie is jealous and remorseful over the possibility that Joe might turn to someone else, Sarah offers an interpretation: she thinks Joe’s conspicuous behavior may be intended to provoke Lennie. Lennie does not simply accept the reassurance; her attention returns to the vulnerability and closeness she had felt with Joe. Sarah’s role is to listen and offer a perspective, not to make Lennie’s conflict disappear.

Across these episodes, the friendship moves from unspoken resentment toward a more candid form of companionship. Sarah can challenge Lennie for withholding, tell her that she misses Bailey, and remain present while Lennie talks through choices she does not understand herself. Their reconciliation is therefore not a return to effortless sameness. It is a renewed recognition that grief has affected both of them, and that being friends requires making room for each other’s separate losses as well as Lennie’s overwhelming one.