Sarah

Sarah is Lennie Walker’s best friend: a literature-loving cynic whose irreverent humor and fierce affection help Lennie reconnect with the living after Bailey’s death. Their friendship is more than comic relief. Its strain, mutual grief, and eventual repair show how Lennie’s loss has reached beyond her family, and how returning to a friend does not require leaving the dead behind.

Identity and Character

Sarah combines skepticism with an appetite for experience. She is described as the most enthusiastic cynic imaginable: school spirit repels her, yet her energy can fill a room. Her literary interests run toward darker material than Lennie’s; she read Sartre’s Nausea in tenth grade, and that period coincided with her adoption of black clothes, cigarettes, and a habit of dwelling on existential crisis even while she stayed out late partying. Her cynicism is therefore not withdrawal from life so much as a comic, intellectual style she carries into it.

Her appearance makes that contrast visible. When she rushes into the music room after Bailey’s funeral, she wears a vintage black dress, heavy boots, and a Stetson, with her blond hair dyed so dark it appears blue. The theatrical goth-cowgirl look matches her energetic entrance: she barrels toward Lennie, attempts to leap into her arms, and sends them skidding into Joe Fontaine. The collision is comic, but the embrace matters more. Lennie has hardly seen Sarah since the funeral and feels guilty about the distance; Sarah greets her with immediate physical warmth rather than a demand for an explanation.

Friendship Under Strain

Sarah’s return gives Lennie a moment of laughter amid the adults’ condolences and the solemnity surrounding Bailey’s death. Sarah jokes about bowling over the handsome new boy, and the two laugh together. For Lennie, that laughter is both welcome and unsettling: she has become accustomed to seeing people shake with heartbreak, not amusement. The scene establishes Sarah’s particular gift as a friend—not a solution to grief, but an interruption in its claim on every moment.

The closeness does not instantly restore their everyday routine. On the last day of junior year, Sarah visits Lennie in her room and says she misses her, then suggests they keep their breakfast tradition. Lennie apologizes for having been awful. Sarah does not accept the apology as a reason to turn away; she says she does not know what to do for Lennie and cannot imagine what she is going through. Looking at Bailey’s untouched bed in the room makes the loss overwhelming for her, too. Her response recognizes both the limits of what a friend can do and the force of the absence surrounding them.

Their next substantial reunion takes place at their longtime secluded swimming spot behind Flying Man’s. Sarah is reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in preparation for a women’s-studies symposium, when Lennie arrives. Sarah is still angry that Lennie has not been in touch, but she gives her a free pass because of the bereavement. The welcome is not a claim that nothing happened: their friendship can contain anger about being left out as well as compassion for the reason Lennie withdrew.

Humor, Confidences, and Mutuality

At the swimming spot, Sarah notices at once that Lennie seems changed. Lennie tells her about Joe: his morning visits with croissants, their music-making, the pleasure his presence brings to Gram and Uncle Big, and the intensity of their first kisses. Sarah listens with delighted fascination, then teasingly calls Lennie demented for describing love so rapturously. The joke does not diminish Lennie’s feelings. Sarah is curious, pleased for her, and eager to hear the details; Lennie, in turn, finds happiness in sharing them with her.

Sarah also brings her own news. She tells Lennie that she has hooked up with Luke Jacobus, who has been in love with her since second grade. Sarah and Luke have a history of brief attraction followed by her turning elsewhere, but this time they have been spending time together because she agreed to write lyrics for his music. Sarah presents the development as possibly foolish and says it happened between them while they were working together. Her disclosure keeps the conversation reciprocal: she is not only Lennie’s audience or caretaker, but a friend with her own uncertain romantic life to share.

Grief and Reconciliation

The deeper repair comes when the two acknowledge the silence between them rather than relying on jokes alone. Sarah and Lennie exchange a look that holds weeks of things unsaid. Lennie explains that she felt like a different person while Sarah seemed unchanged, and connects that misjudgment to the way Bailey may have felt about her. Sarah answers that she could not truly understand what Lennie was experiencing and had felt useless. She had even read books about grief, though she found them formulaic and unhelpful.

Sarah’s admission changes Lennie’s understanding of their estrangement. Lennie realizes that Sarah revered Bailey and had been reading those books for herself as well as trying to help. By withdrawing, Lennie left her friend to mourn alone. She responds by reaching across the bench and hugging Sarah hard. Their reconciliation does not erase Sarah’s frustration or make grief legible to either of them; it restores honesty about the fact that both miss Bailey. Even their return to teasing—a passing car interrupts the moment, and Sarah waves her book at its occupants—shows how laughter can re-enter a conversation that has faced sorrow directly.

Sarah also helps Lennie approach the complicated territory of her relationship with Toby Shaw. She asks whether Lennie and Bailey had been competitive, although she says they had never seemed like sisters locked in rivalry to her. The question gives Lennie a chance to consider the sisterhood she is grieving, rather than assuming Sarah will simply endorse or condemn her choices. Sarah’s frankness is characteristic: she offers companionship without surrendering the right to ask what Lennie may not want to examine.

A Future Shared

When Lennie finally admits that she would love to attend Juilliard, though any good conservatory would do, Sarah responds by imagining a future they might pursue together. She suggests sharing an apartment in New York City and also raises Berklee in Boston as another possibility; she even pictures a drive that would take them through places such as the Grand Canyon and New Orleans. These are proposals, not settled plans, but their importance lies in Sarah’s ability to meet Lennie’s musical ambition as a real desire rather than a betrayal of Bailey’s dream.

Sarah’s role in Lennie’s story is thus both intimate and forward-looking. She helps bring back laughter, receives Lennie’s account of new love, exposes the cost of Lennie’s withdrawal, and shares her own grief for Bailey. When Lennie speaks of studying music, Sarah answers with companionship and imaginable routes ahead. Their friendship does not cure bereavement; it makes room for grief, desire, disagreement, and a life that can continue.