Content Warning: Both the source text and this section of the guide contain descriptions of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and other violence, as well as references to suicide and the sexual exploitation of minors.

An epigraph from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms opens the novel. It reads, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” (vii). The prologue is set in Linden, New Jersey on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Four employees of a Blockbuster Video store are closing up for the night. Steve, the manager, is just a few years older than his four high school employees, Mandy, Candy, Katie, and Ella. Steve finds the back door open and notices one of the girls lying dead. Someone slashes Steve’s neck from behind. He hears screaming as he dies.

In the spring of 2015, Ella Monroe still struggles with the psychological weight of being the only survivor of the Blockbuster murders. She is now a therapist who is over-reliant on Xanax and who regularly cheats on her fiancée with strange men that she meets in hotel bars. After one such tryst, she receives a call from Mr. Steadman, her former teacher, who is now the high school principal.