Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten 

Throughout the book Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten, the main character, June, undergoes changes internally and externally. June puts much of her focus on her friend Delia who also struggles with her own internal thoughts and feelings. As the story progresses you get to see a change in June’s personality, and how she is able to handle herself and others in certain situations that she is put in. While she is undergoing these changes, she has a realization that her actions can directly affect her and the people around her.

Because June is trying to figure out how her friend died, June trusts and follows many people whom she does not know to try and find out how Delia died, and she visits many places that change her perspective on how she is going to have to handle the situations that she is put in.

Since she has to be able to trust different people that she does not know and has never met before, her personality changes and while reading the story you begin to see that change occur over time.

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There is a change that occurs early in the book when you first learn about June and Delia’s dynamic and how they act around each other. June went from being a girl living a simple life with a boyfriend, to being a girl who is put in certain situations that she is not normally put into:

She climbed out of her window… June was scared, but she followed… They peeked into the window of Delia’s cute high-school-aged neighbor… Delia reached around back and unhooked her bra… She convinced June to do the same… Then snuck around the front of the house, opened up the boy’s family’s red-barn mailbox, tossed both bras inside.

(Weingarten 62)

This is different than what June would have ever done before meeting Delia and this is a change that occurs within her early on in the book. This change you can see later in the book when June agrees to go with Delia without knowing where/whom she is actually going with:

• You in, J?
• She asks as if it’s even a choice.
• I feel my head moving almost beyond my control. Up. Down. Up. Down. Whatever comes, whatever happens, after this moment, whatever it is.
• I’m in. (Weingarten 204)

In this moment you can see when she starts to trust people who she does not know very well, and this will change the whole outcome of what is going to happen next. This is a change that happens internally to her and this is something that she is going to have to go along with throughout the story. Then while being around Delia, June develops some of her habits and how she acts around other people, “I look at them and I think, none of you know. I look at them and I think, I do not give one single fuck about any of you. And then I smile, because I realize that is a Delia thought, channeled right into my brain” (Weingarten 208). This is a change that occurred because Delia had an impact on how June started acting and because of this June is going to make decisions that could hurt her in the future.

Moreover, throughout the book and through June’s conversations with different in the story, you see her change from being more of an introverted person to being more of an extroverted person. In the beginning of the story June develops this idea that Delia did not commit suicide, when everybody thinks that she did, and for the first time she is able to communicate her idea with another person, “ ‘No’, I start. ‘I mean, what I am trying to say is … that maybe someone else did. Kill her. Who wasn’t her.’ There. The words are out.” (Weingarten 85). With her development through conversations that she has you see her start to grow and be able to have conversations with people who she would not be able to have conversations with. June gets this idea that Delia may have committed suicide because she was pregnant and it being too much for her to handle.

June has to confront her boyfriend about this to see if he cheated on her with Delia and got Delia pregnant, “I imagine his big square face, pale bloodshot eyes. I can barely get the words out. ‘Was Delia pregnant?’” (Weingarten 138). With this in mind and all of the other “clues” that she had discovered about Delia’s death, June finds out that Delia is still alive and that she needs her help with what Delia is going through in her life after running away. Through a conversation that happens between Delia and June, you see June change and develop to being more trusting of other people and not being afraid to do things, “ ‘Once you get involved, once you know what happened, you won’t be able to un-know it, and’- she stares at me then –‘You won’t be able to go back…’ ‘I’m sure’, I say” (Weingarten 166). This is a major part of her development and change because this will change her life forever and she will not be able to go back.

Although June is able to help Delia and help her to feel better, June had to go to great lengths to help her friend and also had to go through many conflicts with people who June does not know. To find out how her friend died and what happened to her friend she has to get answers about the type of people she was involved with. June goes to a party to get answers about Delia and to get information about the type of people she was involved with, but she has to try to get into the party first, “Maybe Delia’s ghost really is here, because Delia wouldn’t have been scared of this guy for a second, and suddenly neither am I” (Weingarten 56).

She would have never had the courage to do this before meeting Delia and this is a change with her internally because nobody at this party knows how she is in real life and she comes off as being a girl who does this all the time when she does not go to parties often. June then receives a “suicide note” from Delia dated the day she died, June then has an internal conflict with the realization that Delia may have committed suicide, “The letter in front of me was written by Delia, that part is clear. I read them again, again, again… And I shake my head… I know things could have been different. Dear Lord, I wish they were” (Weingarten 140-141). While she does get all of her questions answered about Delia, how she got the answers and the way she was able to change over time, helped her in being able to help Delia and was able to put herself into new situations that she had never been in before.

As a result of the change of June from the beginning of the book to the middle of the book, she has overcome and learned from everything that she has done to help her friend Delia. She has changed from a shy girl who did not do much with other people to a girl with a friend who pushes her to do things that are out of her comfort zone and to expand her thinking about what she is able to accomplish. With this in mind she has changed her outlook on how much she is actually able to accomplish and how her actions are able to directly affect people in her life.