Crank Ellen Hopkins Summary

“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins tells the story of a teenage girl, modeled after her own daughter, who becomes addicted methamphetamine, known on the streets as “crank”. The story follows Kristina's downward spiral as she attempts to feed her addiction and copes with the consequences of the decisions she makes.
Kristina starts using drugs during a trip to visit her birth father in Albuquerque. Kristina is already feeling unaccepted by her family. She describes her mother as distant, her step-father as heavy-handed, her older sister as distracted, and younger brother as spoiled; however, thinking of her father, she is hopeful. She is deeply disappointed when she learns that her father is not the prince that she imagined him to be. Instead, he is distant

and uninterested in Kristina. During this time of emotional distress Kristina meets her first boyfriend, Adam. It is during this time that Kristina takes on a new alter-ego who she calls Bree. Kristina describes Bree as her true inner self. While Kristina is traditionally a good girl, Bree throws caution to the wind. Bree flirts with boys; wants to experience the wild side of life; and most importantly, takes drugs. At the end of her trip, Kristina and Adam breakup but first, Adam gives Kristina a stick-and-poke tattoo of a purple heart.
Upon arriving home to Reno, Kristia is not ready to part with her drugs, and as a result, introduces “Bree” to her family through snappy comments and failing grades.

Kristina settles in with a new crowd, ditching her childhood best friends Trent and Sarah. She meets Brendan, her first drug dealer, on a family trip to the water park. She quickly realizes that he is bad news, but doesn’t turn him away in fear of losing her connections. Soon after, she meets Robyn, a bubbly cheerleader who uses crank to stay skinny and give her extra pep. In the end Robyn is one of the few characters that leaves Kristian better than they found her. Then Kristina meets Chase, the schools refuted “bad boy”, and falls in love with him. At the novels close she is still in a relationship with Chase.
Sneaking out in the middle of the night lands Kristina in juvenile hall, where she meets a girl with a connection to the Mexican Mafia and becomes a drug dealer. For a while she is happy with her steady coke supply and new found fame at her school. However, as Newton’s law of universal gravitation suggests, what goes up must come down. Kristina learns that she is pregnant from a man who raped her while she was under the influence. At the end of the book, Kristina expresses that she is grateful for her son, Hunter. Despite the realization that drugs have only brought destruction to her life, Kristina still is unable to break her meth

addiction.