Character Analysis
She's No Angel
Angela might seem like an angel who swoops in to save Will, but if so, she's crammed those feathery white wings under her black leather jacket. Neither compassionate nor cheery, Angela's curmudgeonly nature and only vaguely altruistic moves don't stand out as the kind that typically motivate the hero—or antihero—to action.
Instead, Angela's more of a Knight in Sour Armor, which makes her a great mirroring device for our, well, sour narrator. Angela plays the tough girl with Will and makes it clear that she does "not have much use for people" (714), which is basically a nice way of saying she can drop him in a heartbeat. Unafraid of what people think of her, she doles out some tough love by being frank with Will from time to time.
Will is prone to faulty logic—he's all I am a loser, I make people nervous, I am near-nothingness all the time—and Angela is the only person in Will's life who calls him out on his sulky, self-pitying behavior. Will admires her for being honest, straightforward, and for calling his bluff when it needs to be called, and importantly, since part of Will's problem when the story opens is that everyone treats him like the damaged goods he believes himself to be, Angela provides some much-needed pushback on this self-understanding.
She's Not That Into Him… Or is She?
It's never entirely clear what Angela feels for Will. Overall she believes "people suck" (299), and claims she's not interested in making friends. In fact, she tells Will that she only wants to be seen with him because it will make her "even scarier and less approachable." A romantic she is not, but is a friends-only arrangement really what she is after?
Because we all know that love is rarely black and white, the fact that Angela is sometimes kind of into him and sometimes just kind of annoyed with him might not sway us either way. Showing up at his house when she's worried something has happened to him might, though—that maneuver makes it super clear that she really does care about him. Whether it's romantic or not becomes beside the point: In showing up to make sure Will's okay when he locks himself inside his house for three days, it's obvious Angela wants him in her life.
She Also Has Trust Issues
Angela doesn't immediately trust Will because he won't tell his story or communicate what his deal is. He has to be pushed into giving details about his past, and Angela's just not that into pushing, even when it's clear that she might sort of care about him.
When Will asks her "Do I scare you at all?" (474), and Angela responds "Not at all" (475), Will says, "So you get it, then. Like, you understand" (476)—you know, as though in not being afraid of him she must truly understand him. And maybe she does, but Angela won't give him this. Instead, she's pretty clear that he isn't exactly making sense these days, and she won't really tell Will why she wants to be his friend. So as much as she gives him grief for being a closed book, her lips are pretty sealed as well when it comes to the softer side of friendship.
It's Complicated
In reference to their high school Angela declares, "I, unlike you, am here because I want to be here." However, it isn't obvious what landed her in the school for kids with issues, or if it's really true that she "came to this place to run. That's it" (305). Angela's tough exterior protects her from showing her feelings, but Will comes to like this about her. Like him, she's complicated—what you see is not really what you get.
But Angela isn't just Will's female counterpart—she's different from him, too—and one of the big things she shows him is what it's like to be a person who stands up for herself and takes charge of her existence. She shows him you can be private and still invested in your life. "Life is a gift," she tells him. "Only you can't return it if it don't fit right. You just grow into it" (1231). Though we don't know much about her, it sounds like Angela knows what she's talking about here, and she's certainly spot on in this advice when it comes to Will.