Narc Response

The book Narc by Crissa-Jean Chappell is about a socially awkward teenager named Aaron and his various school dilemmas. Caught with a bag of weed, he accepts an offer from the police to avoid arrest by working undercover for them. His mission is to locate the “shot callers” of the drugs circulating in his high school and find out where the drugs are coming from. To do so, the lonely teen has to make friends, attend parties, and get involved in drugs deals and other business that he would of otherwise never have even considered. Even though Aaron was being forced to do this, he benefited from his work because in the process, he made authentic friends and his social life turned around completely. The book shows that making friends and being socially active is not a big challenge, and with a little motivation it’s easier than it seems.

Previously, Aaron only had one friend and the majority of his Saturday nights were spent at home playing video games. Although he did have a smoking problem, he never went out late at night and got drunk or pursued girls. After the cops told Aaron of his new duties, Aaron soon realized what he had to do: “This meant going to parties. This meant making friends.” With this new motivation, even with the poor social skills Aaron had until then, he succeeded. After a brief talk in school with a very popular girl named Morgan, he got the guts to make a move. “Finally I sent an instant message (hi) and held my breath.” Though it doesn’t seem like much, this brief message was a great improvement in his socializing. Later on, Aaron ended up being very close to Morgan, and “she took my face into her hands and we tilted into a kiss.” So when Aaron is forced to get a girlfriend, he can do it. A lot of people in the real world just need the same kind of motivation.

Making friends was the first step in Aaron’s mission, but the challenging part was to edge his way into a party. Without any invitations, it was awfully difficult to attend a party, so Aaron would have to go in uninvited. But when he found out his sister might be hurt if he failed, he knew he had to get down to business with his undercover work. So he walked in uninvited and talked to some people and found out good information for his mission. By the middle of the book, Aaron didn’t even need any major motivation to be social anymore. “Pretty soon I was hanging out with Morgan and Skully every weekend,” he said. When Aaron didn’t want to share his house with the rest of his family for a couple of days, his friend Skully let him stay at her house. That’s pretty impressive for a kid whose best friend had been his Xbox. But without his motivation from the police, Aaron would have never considered the idea of meeting and becoming friends with new people.

There are tons of kids in the world who are at the bottom of the “social scale” who just lack the motivation to move up. Aaron provides a great example of a kid who just needed an incentive to get going, and once he did he succeeded in making friends. The author didn’t use this as the main idea of the story, but it certainly is a very strong message that should be utilized by the world.