Melinda’s character develops tremendously over the course of the book. In the beginning of the book, she says, “ I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don’t have anyone to sit with. I am an outcast” (Anderson, 4). At the start, Melinda had lost all of her friends after she busted a party last summer, but nobody knows that a senior boy at the party raped her. Throughout the course of the book Speak, she goes through ups and downs, but in the end she has gained enough confidence to stand up against the boy who raped her. Her art teacher and her are talking “Mr. Freeman: You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you? Me: Let me tell you about it” (Anderson, 198). The book ends with Melinda feeling