In this chap­ter of “Mani­ac Magee,” Aman­da attempts to con­vince Mani­ac to stay with the fam­i­ly, empha­siz­ing that he’s let­ting the opin­ions of a “nut­ty old coot” influ­ence him. She brush­es off the chalked mes­sage on the house, sug­gest­ing it’s no big deal and instead a moti­va­tion for her moth­er to clean, restor­ing her hap­pi­ness. How­ev­er, Mani­ac feels deep con­cern for Aman­da and her family’s emo­tions, which she does­n’t grasp. Their con­ver­sa­tion evolves into play­ful yet point­ed ban­ter, reveal­ing the ten­sion between them.

As Aman­da express­es her wor­ries about Maniac’s sur­vival with­out her, he responds with sar­cas­tic retorts, light­en­ing the mood while mask­ing his gen­uine feel­ings. Despite the humor, Aman­da is vis­i­bly frus­trat­ed with how eas­i­ly he dis­miss­es the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion and their friend­ship. She asserts that if he leaves, he should­n’t expect to return or take any of her belong­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly her pre­cious ency­clo­pe­dia.

When Aman­da shares that he can’t get a library card with­out a prop­er address, she real­izes her words hit a sen­si­tive spot with him. This abrupt con­fes­sion changes the atmos­phere, and Mani­ac departs, caus­ing Aman­da to lash out in her feel­ings of help­less­ness. She spends the fol­low­ing day fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for him, vis­it­ing var­i­ous neigh­bor­hoods and tire­less­ly ped­al­ing her bike, grow­ing increas­ing­ly wor­ried. Even­tu­al­ly, Mani­ac returns late that night, and Aman­da’s irri­ta­tion sub­sides, replaced with a sub­tle relief.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, a sit­u­a­tion unfolds that gives Aman­da an idea, watch­ing Mani­ac help a child with a yo-yo string knot. Inspired, she won­ders how she could help ensure Maniac’s accep­tance among oth­ers. She approach­es him with a propo­si­tion, hint­ing that if cer­tain con­di­tions are met, per­haps the com­mu­ni­ty’s per­spec­tive on him could change, indi­cat­ing her desire for him to remain part of their lives. Aman­da shares her thoughts on Cob­ble’s Knot, which might serve as a solu­tion to their dilem­ma.