76 pages • 2 hours read
Gabrielle ZevinElsewhere
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 2, Chapters 10-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Book of the Dead”
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “The Well”
Liz quickly settles into her work at the DDA: “She was in that rare and enviable situation: she excelled at her work, and she loved doing it. Work helped the rest of her first summer in Elsewhere pass quickly” (137). Nevertheless, as she and Thandi walk Sadie and Paco one night, Liz wonders if this is all there is to life in Elsewhere.
As Liz’s father’s birthday approaches, she finds herself thinking more and more about the cashmere sweater she had bought for him and hidden beneath the floorboards in her closet: “She knows that Contact is illegal, yet she refuses to believe that getting one insignificant sweater to her father could really cause that much trouble” (140). She therefore once again decides to visit the Well.
Liz is an experienced swimmer and diver, and she reaches the Well without incident. When she looks into it, she sees her family sitting down to eat, and she yells at them to look under the closet floorboards. This causes all the faucets in the house to begin running; her parents shut them off, but when Liz once again sets them running, Alvy announces that he can hear Liz’s 
