 Who gets to say what and what we hear and what we don't? I don't believe a novel should have one central thesis or message, but there is something that Millie says in the beginning where she's explaining why another student called her ghetto. And she says, you know what? I don't talk like that, but people hear what they want to hear. And I think that that's true for a lot of characters. There's what happens and then there's where we are at to receive what happens and everything gets a little bit twisted through that lens.