When the World Tips Over

Dizzy tries to tell her brother, Perfect Miles, that she met an angel. Dizzy loves her older brother, Wynton, whom she let sneak into the house even though Chef Mom—the name they use for their mother, who works as a chef—kicked him out for crashing her truck and getting thrown in jail. Dizzy doesn’t understand Miles, even though she reads his notes to himself and sometimes hears him crying in his sleep. Her Uncle Clive has an unkempt appearance, and her mother has warned her to avoid him when he is drinking. Clive tells Dizzy that he dreamed that Wynton lost his music. Clive is the brother of Dizzy’s father, Theo Fall. The family vineyard was once famous but now is rented out. Dizzy sees the kissing ghosts who inhabit the vineyard. Excerpts from the Paradise Springs Gazette describe the occasion of Theo Fall’s resurrection and subsequent disappearance.

Dizzy’s mom writes letters that she never sends, something she began doing after her brother, Christophe, died when she was young. Chef Mom makes dinner for Dizzy’s father every night. Chef Mom is beautiful, “big and flashy” (22). Dizzy tries to tell her mom she saw an angel, but Chef Mom is on the phone talking about her new sauté cook, Felix. Chef Mom’s parents are French and Jewish. Wynton, who is not supposed to be in the house, comes downstairs. He gives back the engagement ring he stole from his mother. Wynton traded his motorcycle for a new violin bow because he wants to impress someone coming to hear him. Miles breaks the bow. Letters at the end of the chapter include Dizzy’s last will and testament and letters from Bernadette to Dizzy and Theo. She tells Theo she misses him.

Miles has run away from his prep school, where he has an athletic scholarship, and has been hiding this fact from his mother. He has a crush on a boy at school. Miles speaks telepathically with the neighbor’s black lab, Sandro. Sandro feels that his life is empty since his beloved, Beauty, left. Several weeks ago, Miles had his first kiss in the walk-in refrigerator at his mother’s restaurant with Nico, a cook. Miles wants to be in love like Samantha Brooksweather from his mother’s romance novel. Miles’s version of synesthesia is to associate colors with words.

Beside the vineyard, Miles finds a girl with curly rainbow-colored hair and several tattoos sleeping in an orange pickup truck. There are books all over the truck’s seat. The girl wakes up, startled, and Miles teases her about reading Steinbeck. He asks about one of her tattoos, which she says is from Joseph Campbell: “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s” (45). As she drives away, Miles runs after her. Excerpts at the end of the chapter capture Miles’ jotted notes, imagined conversations, and a call to a depression hotline, as well as Bernadette’s notes to Miles and her sous chef, Finn.

Miles and Sandro join the girl in the truck. She smells like flowers, and Sandro thinks she smells familiar. Miles and the girl discuss books and he finds himself confessing to her about the mean things Wynton has done to him. Two weeks ago, Wynton invited Miles out with him and some friends, and Miles believes he was drugged. He remembers drinking, being groped by a girl named Madison, and waking up in a dumpster. Miles wishes Wynton would love him. He searches for his father online and writes him emails. With the rainbow-haired girl, Miles “felt transformed, like light was seeping into him instead of out of him” (62). He feels as if his spirit is vibrating and he’s coming back to life. They arrive at Jeremiah Falls. Miles realizes his attraction to her is more spiritual than sexual, and she reveals that she can hear Miles and Sandro talking.

Both Sandro and Miles feel invigorated after meeting the rainbow-haired girl. An excerpt from a 1956 novel suggests that the town of Paradise Springs has the ability to disappear. The Gazette discusses the Devil Winds. Miles writes emails to his father. Bernadette is trying to figure out the recipe to a chocolate cake.

Wynton still hears his father playing trumpet. Once, when he was 13, he followed the sound to a meadow where he found a girl, crying. He talked to her and fell in love. Wynton’s father, Theo, put his trumpet in bed with Wynton on the night he left. A band from Los Angeles is coming to scout Wynton, and Wynton is desperate to play his best. Wynton feels hungry to experience everything, thinking, “They were all just paper people in a burning world” (74). Wynton is nervous. After Miles breaks his bow, Wynton breaks into his violin teacher’s house and steals a bow. Wynton adores his sister, who he thinks is beautiful on the inside, like a geode. By contrast, he thinks of himself as ugly both inside and out, believing that even dogs dislike him because they can see “all the way to his ugly soul” (77). Wynton keeps waiting for his father to come back. He meets Doc Larry and talks with Dave Caputo, a sad old guy who has lost his family. A crime report from the Gazette reports that Wynton collided with and destroyed the town’s statue of Alonso Fall, and Bernadette’s letters bemoan Wynton’s fragility, Clive’s drinking, and the loss of her brother, Christophe.

Wynton’s playing amazes the people in the bar. He wears sunglasses because playing makes him cry. He doesn’t see the people from the band who were supposed to come hear him. He feels high from the pills he’s been taking and has sex with a girl named Dawn.

Wynton gets beat up by Dawn’s boyfriend and then drives toward home. He feels he is “in the wrong tempo, the wrong key” (89). He stops to play music in the middle of the road, and the rainbow-haired girl approaches him. She says her name is Cassidy, and he realizes that she’s the girl from the meadow. Wynton tells her, “No one comes back for me” (91) but she says she did. They dance in the road, and Wynton feels a part of himself unfolding. Cassidy tries to pull him off the road, but then a car comes out of nowhere and hits Wynton. The transcript of the call to 911 includes Cassidy saying that Wynton is important to her.