Clean Getaway

From the start of the novel and Scoob and G’ma’s first meal on the road, Scoob notices how people notice and often stare, if not sneer, at the pair of them together. This is because G’ma is white Scoob is Black. He knows and has always recognized the contrast between the two, but in the southern states he and G’ma drive through, he sees more and more people begin to stare. One person, he notices, “openly sneers at him like he’s done something wrong. […] Like he is something wrong, even” (19). This not only illustrates the ways in which he is judged for the color of his skin, stereotyped to be a hooligan bothering the nice white lady as he travels with G’ma, but it also demonstrates how prevalent racism still is, even if it seems polite. It still resonates with and influences those affected by it.

As the novel progresses, Scoob peels back the layers of stereotype built around Jimmy. His father always referred to G’pop as a criminal, and Scoob finds out that while Jimmy was stealing money from the gas station he worked at, the “big fish” was really his G’ma. However, G’ma points out that people were unlikely to suspect her because she was a “pretty blonde girl with the ‘megawatt smile’” (193). This works distinctly against the stereotype that Jimmy—and Scoob—experienced because it flips the story so that the white person is the one who committed the more grievous crime rather than the Black man.

Stone offers a red herring in that the narration first leads readers to be concerned about Jimmy’s past, especially by having Scoob think so much about James’s negative perception of his father as a crook. However, while Scoob initially worries about this, his concerns begin to shift as he learns more and more about G’ma, and as this happens, Scoob thinks, “[i]t’s like the woman he’s sent his whole life looking up to has been replaced with a total stranger” (161). This revelation affects the reader and moves them even further away from racial stereotyping. As we learn from G’ma, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye, a fact that had a fatal effect on Jimmy’s life.

Scoob often feels like people are judging him rather than getting the full story, as is apparent in much of the trouble he has at school. While he knows that he shouldn’t have resorted to violence or shared the secret to cheating on his computer science quizzes, he also knows that people don’t think more critically about why he might be acting out. From the earliest part of the novel, readers come to understand that he saw his friend who has epilepsy being bullied and that’s why he chose to confront Bryce. Likewise, he wasn’t even the one to change his grade in class; instead, he was a useful scapegoat. The adults in his life, aside from G’ma, and the other students at school have stigmatized him for his actions, but this does nothing but make Scoob want to escape with G’ma and leave his phone behind.