The Pick Up To Make Up For All The Let Downs

In the book Crank by Ellen Hopkins, teenager Kristina Georgia Snow decides to visit her dad whom she has not seen in 8 years, since he and her mom got divorced. She remembers him as possibly who he once was or who she always wished he was, a good, caring, father, this however is not who he is now. Kristina's dad works at a bowling alley, where he goes into a back room and does crystal meth (crank) very often, he has no food in the house even though he was aware that his daughter would be staying with him for a while, with the lack of food they occasionally decided to go out to McDonalds (he and Kristina) but instead got caught up doing a line of crank, together. Before Kristina went to visit her good for nothing dad, she was a good, clean, smart child. When she went to visit him, she fell for a damaging, sleazy boy, she became a crank addict, and along with that became an entire different person, Bree.

Perhaps Kristina was lost in the moment with a cute boy who she thought of as trustworthy, and that's why she took her first line of crank, and maybe that first time lead to the second and the third time. But I think that there was a bigger reason why Kristina did crystal meth each time. I think she uses it to make up for her being repeatedly let down. On page 102, Kristina is doing crank for the first time because Adam (who was a slight love at first sight situation and who she at this point considered to be her boyfriend) encouraged her to, when both Kristina's dad and Adam's other girlfriend come in. Kristina says "Things went from weird to worse. I mean, there I was, snorting crank with my dad, my boyfriend, and his other girlfriend." She wanted and thought she was Adams real and only girlfriend, that they had something special, but he had another girlfriend, she was not special. First let down. She took a hit. Also she goes to Albuquerque (where all this happens) to see her dad whom she had this semi-nice picture of in her head. She wanted to go there and be his little princess like she used to be, get close to him again, anything. Instead he barely fed her, encouraged the start of her crank addiction, and creepily asked her about her sex life. None of these describe the activities of anything close to a good dad. Second let down. Later on, Kristina finally goes back home, an entirely different person than when she left. She is still in a relationship with Adam, and is constantly thinking about him and about crank. Now, she thinks that she is really, really his only girlfriend because the other girl, Lince, is in a comma. Adam calls her, tells her that Lince woke up, tells her that he thinks they should see other people. Third let down, all too similar to the first too. She goes in search of more crank.

So throughout the story, Kristina has expectations or ideas that get crushed and ruined and she gets let down. Each time this happens she either does crystal meth or really wants to do crystal meth. Maybe if she had not been let down in the first place she would not have done it and therefore gotten addicted.  She is constantly being let down and so wants to get away from the reality that is so much worse than what's in her mind, crank makes what's in her mind more of a reality, or just blocks out reality, either way picking her up from these let downs. Her being let down does not give her an excuse to do crank however, she still has responsibilities and knows that what she is doing is wrong. Maybe her doing crank is a let down to herself, therefore causing her to do more to get away from feeling let down by her own self, causing her to be in this never ending spiral of crank. There needs to be a way to get out of this spiral, but looking for that way when it's not right in front of her is so much more work than just letting crank pick her up and take her away.