Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes Chapter 13 Summary

In the book Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, in the beginning of chapter thirteen, we learn that Sarah Byrnes has been living above Mrs. Lemry’s garage for the past three days, and that Eric went to tell Laurel, her counselor, that Sarah’s okay, but Laurel is suspicious of Sarah’s dad. In a flashback, Eric and Ellerby pick Sarah up from the hospital, then Virgil Byrnes drives by but doesn’t see it’s Sarah or Eric, even when Ellerby honks at him, Eric thinks that once Virgil finds out Sarah left, “the stakes to this game would go up” (203). In the present, during Sarah’s first day in CAT class, the topic is abortion and Mautz is there, while Mark rambles on about his point of view towards abortion. Lemry argues with Mark that, “not everything is about christianity” (205), and Mark counters, “ It’s when we believe everything
Then she finally brings Mautz into the conversation, she asks, “You and Mr.Mautz go to the same church, don’t you?” (207), she also asked if, “Do all the people in your church think all life is sacred?” (208). Using this information, she explains that Mautz has never even talked to her before, but Mark claims everyone is just a bunch of, “crybabies” (209), who, “can’t take their own medicine” (209), Ellerby tries to intervene, but Mark just yells at him in an unchristian way. Finally, Jody steps in and tells the whole class that Mark has always said, “A man is known by his works” (210), and that her and Mark’s “works” were an unborn baby, that he told her to, “get rid of” (210), Furious Mark claims that Jody is lying and leaves the room. At the end of the chapter, Ellerby says, “I won’t be doing my report on shame. I could never top that”