Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of suicide, self-harm, disordered eating, and sexual assault.

Much of the novel observes how youth and talent become sites of pain, a subject that Bodie and her cohost, Lance, discuss on Starlet Fever. Similarly, the story of Kurt Cobain offers a reflection for the painful price of fame and talent. Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana and the epitome of 1990s grunge and angst, dies by suicide while Bodie attends Granby. Bodie invokes his image throughout the novel, intertwining his fate with that of Thalia. Both appear destined for further greatness, and both die young, frozen in the 1990s. By connecting his death to Thalia, Bodie shows how Cobain’s death symbolizes the destruction of innocence and the loss of youthful talent. Bodie recalls that, following his death, “Clover Music sold copies of his suicide note” (105). She had taped a “Xerox of a Xerox” (105) above her bed, and the seemingly macabre mementos solidified Thalia’s friends’ distaste for Bodie. While Thalia found the display touching, her friends Beth and Rachel imagined that Bodie would harm herself next. (Whether this was mockery or genuine concern for Thalia remains unknown.) After seeing the makeshift shrine, Beth had told Thalia that she shouldn’t dismiss the note’s presence, warning Thalia to “wait till [she finds Bodie] hanging from the ceiling” (105).