True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

Chapter 22 begins with further changes to Mark's class, both negative and positive. The first key event at Central Juvenile Hall is a high school graduation, in which many of his students participate. The graduation is both a joyous and somber event; while students of Mark's are usually happy and proud, the students' impeding legal jeopardy puts a cloud over the celebrations. The threat of imminent incarceration weighs on the inmates and their work. However, Mark is more able to channel their energy into their writing: with the help of Ms. Brigade, they begin writing on more abstract topics. In these, new student Dale Jones stands out; he writes about a roommate of his who is bound for the country jail: "As we talked every day, all day, we found we WERE each other. He was me and I was him, but I couldn't understand it […] but little did we know we knew each other, and it took seventeen years to find each other" (256). At the end of the chapter, Ms. Brigade reads a poem of her own, whose lines resonate with the boys’ own loneliness and pain: "When I look back at you/I see my little brother" (259).