China is even prepared to testify against Jeremy in his trial saying that he acted alone because she never saw the baby.
As graduation day approaches, China has the rest of her life mapped out: "Putting everything in its place like pegs in a board" (614). She is about to graduate from high school with a G.P.A. in the top ten, and has already been accepted to her first choice college after which she plans to go to grad school. Jeremy's G.P.A. too will put him in the top ten of his class and he has already been accepted to Brown College. The excitement of being freshmen in college is short-lived. The great expectations that Jeremy has for college are thwarted on discovering that China is carrying his baby: .
Life in the dorms, roommates, bars, bullshit sessions, the smell of burning leaves and the way the light fell across campus in great wide smoking bands just before dinner, the unofficial skateboard club, films, lectures, pep rallies, football - none of it mattered. He couldn't have a life. Couldn't be a freshman. (617) .
Ironically, the things that had mattered the most to him just a few days earlier are no longer important because he can no longer have them now that he is expecting a baby.
As the couple prepares to leave high school for their camping trip, Jeremy alludes to Martin Luther King's speech, "Free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last" (615). On hindsight this statement has a very ironic ring. Their newfound freedom from high school is short lived. It is while the couple has gone camping that China becomes pregnant and that brings a screeching halt to their blissful existence. The writer describes their period of incarceration followed by house arrest, "He wore a plastic anklet that set off an alarm if he went out the door, and so did she (623)". They are definitely not free at all.
Boyle describes the couple as being "careful, always careful" (616). However, China forgets her pills and Jeremy has only two condoms when they go camping.