Chapter #1:

• Evan said he was angry at Jessie. Using empathy from the little information you know so far, what do you think made him angry?

  • I think Evan was angry for humiliating him as he said earlier. I am not sure why she humiliated him, though.

Chapter #2:

• Jessie says she is not good at empathy. What are some things you think she could do better?

  • I think some things she can do are to use self-awareness to see how she would feel in someone else’s situation while also realizing that everyone is different and might feel differently than she would in that situation. She could do the same thing with thinking about how she acts when she is feeling each emotion. Another way is that she could notice tells about people similar to those and ask them what they are feeling. If they tell her something, she can try to notice patterns. If they say it is private, she can notice patterns of when people want their emotions to stay private.

Chapter #4:

• Jessie was trying to be nice to Evan when waving money at him, but there was a miscommunication. Which of the two do you think was using more emotional intelligence in the situation? What makes you think so?

1. I think neither of them were being perfect. I think that Jessie could have used social skills to understand what waving money meant as well as used empathy to think about how what Evan is feeling will influence how he sees things. I think Evan could use more self-awareness to notice that he was feeling ashamed and inferior to Jessie instead of blaming her and assuming that she was feeling contemptuous and superior to him. He also could have used empathy to realize that he knows his sister and this is not something that Jessie would do.

Chapter #5:

• Evan yells at Jessie, saying no one likes her, which is not emotionally intelligent. What do you think Evan wants in this situation? How does he think yelling at Jessie would help him achieve it? What would be a better choice for this situation?

  • I think Evan wants to get out what he is thinking and feel like he is above Jessie. He feels ashamed due to her being in his grade and wants to counteract it by bringing her down by talking about the things he thinks she is bad at. He screams it out because he was not thinking and just wanted to cope with his emotions quickly. A better choice would be to think about those skills that he is better at than her and remember that everyone is better at some things and worse than others. Nobody is inherently better or worse than anyone else. Also due to him being embarrassed by how others will think about her being better at him in math, he can try to think that anyone who thinks one person is better or worse than another person is someone whose opinions do not matter.

Chapter #6:

• In the awkward situation with Carly, what does each character expect each other character to do? Are they meeting these expectations? If so, how would they feel if they did not meet these expectations? If not, how do they feel about them not doing it?

  • In my opinion, Jessie thought that her and Megan would just make a lemonade stand alone. Carly thought she could see Evan, thinking Megan would want her there. Megan thought she could see Jessie and Evan and not have anyone else invite themselves. None of them met each other’s expectations. Jessie feels hurt and bitter that Megan never said to invite Evan and expected her to do so. Carly feels angry because she thinks everyone should accommodate her. Megan feels surprised that Evan is not there, guilty that Jessie feels hurt, and angry at Carly for inviting herself.

• If Megan knew about the bet, which side would she be on?

  • I think she would not be on either side and feel angry at Jessie for using her.

Chapter #9:

• Do you consider Evan’s decision to throw the marble in Jessie’s general direction at the beginning of the chapter emotionally intelligent?

  • I think it was emotionally intelligent. He knew that it would not help anything but just wanted to get it out and decided to cope in this way. Obviously, it is not good to do this too much because it can damage things, but in this situation he had self-awareness by knowing he felt upset, motivation by knowing that he wanted to ease it a little, and self-regulation by choosing to make a choice and accept the consequences. He was not especially empathic and socially skilled but was not especially lacking either skill either.

Chapter #10:

• Do you personally believe that Jessie and Evan’s mom is right that they will not stop being angry at each other until they figure out why the other person is angry at them?

  • The idea of anger is that it is unfair, how dare you make it unfair, I am going to make it fair. Things are not always actually unfair when we are feeling angry though. Sometimes, even if we logically know it is fair, we can still feel angry about it. Usually the way anger goes away is that we decide that it was not actually unfair, decide that the person or thing you are angry at was not at fault, or stop caring. In my opinion, the anger can subside in other ways than having empathy for each other, but it can help to see that it is not their sibling’s fault. This is probably the best way because otherwise after the anger goes away, they could feel other emotions towards each other such as hate or bitterness.

• What do you think Evan and Jessie each want to get from winning the competition? If you were in their situation, do you think the lengths they are going to win are worth the prize they want?

  • I think Jessie wanted to show Evan that she was good at things and deserved to be close to him, show him that he was wrong to exclude her, not look like a person who gives up, and not be a person who gives up. I think Evan wants to prove to the people around him that Jessie isn’t better than him, prove to himself that Jessie isn’t better than him, and get back at her for being better at him in math. I think none of these are worth the lengths they are going to win. If they really thought about each one, most of them do not matter, some of them they can get elsewhere, and some of them should be accomplished by accepting themselves and not needing outside validation.