Gone Girl Chapter 30 Summary

Amy Elliott Dunne—The Day Of

• Welcome to Part 2, Shmoopsters, titled "Boy Meets Girl."
• "I'm so much happier now that I'm dead," Amy tells us as Part Two begins. Um, excuse us? Is this where Gone Girl goes all Lovely Bones on us with Amy speaking from the grave? If this is what you're thinking, take a chill pill and sit back—you ain't seen nothin' yet.
• Here's the very short version: For the past year, Amy's been making a to-do list of how to frame Nick for murder. Apparently the diary we've just invested ourselves in reading and caring about was fake, but she promises she'll get to that, saying that there's a lot that is true and a lot that's not true and that she'll break it all down for us.
• What we do know right off the bat is that she actually did cut herself in the kitchen. In the arm, right down to the muscle, letting it pool all over the floor, then doing a deliberately poor job of cleaning it up. She also spent the last year setting up the lie that she has a severe phobia of blood and needles. She tipped over the furniture in the living room, doing an obviously phony job of it, and she wrapped the first clue in the treasure hunt and put it in a place that was not obvious enough for Nick to find, but in plain enough sight for the cops to get at it. And this, friends, is only the beginning.
• But before Amy unveils the rest of the true story, she wants us to get to know her better. The real her, not the self she's spent more than a year fabricating. She starts off by talking about the dark history of her squeaky clean parents: seven miscarried or stillborn children, all named Hope by Marybeth, which is super creepy.
• Because of losing so many babies, the Elliotts never expected Amy to actually make it. Amy, who was given an ordinary, popular girl's name to contrast the extraordinary odds of her survival, grew up feeling proud of this—that she was not just the only child, but the only child who "made it."
• Every year, her mother takes time to drink tea alone and quietly remember the birth/death dates of the Hopes. Amy grew to resent them because in her mother's eyes, they are perfect, even though they've never lived, whereas for her each new day has been a chance to make more mistakes and have people see her as less than perfect. Nick, however, changes all this, because he truly seems to love Amy for who she is.
• Here's the problem with this, though: Nick actually has no idea who Amy really is because she's been pretending the whole time she's known him. From the moment she met Nick, she's cast herself in the identity of a woman she calls "the Cool Girl," a nonexistent woman who is funny, beautiful, witty, and one of the guys all at the same time. Nick makes it easy for her to morph into this new identity, and until now she's been able to keep up the deception. This pretty much explains the inconsistencies in her character that Nick's pointed out—how she's transformed from being the awesome girl he fell in love with to someone dark and distant.
• Now though, she's come to the conclusion that she can't keep being Cool Amy. She's begun to hate Nick and hate herself for getting herself into this situation to begin with. And that, Shmoopsters, is how her disturbingly warped plan was born.