Content Warning: This section references underage drinking and drug use, as well as a death by vehicle accident and abusive behaviors.

Fifteen-year-old Halley Cooke receives a call from her best friend, Scarlett Thomas, while away at camp. Scarlett’s boyfriend, Michael Sherwood, has died following a motorcycle accident. Scarlett asks Halley to come home, and Halley agrees right away.

Halley recalls the summer that Scarlett and her mother, Marion, moved to their neighborhood, Lakeview. In this memory, 11-year-old Halley walks over to Scarlett, sitting on her new porch, and worries that Scarlett will be mean to her like the other girls in the neighborhood. Instead, the girls hear Marion inside calling to Scarlett, asking where her checkbook is. Scarlett knows right where it is and looks back at Halley, shaking her head. Scarlett introduces herself, and Halley sits next to her. The two girls don’t talk right away, but Halley knows that “[they have] a whole lifetime of talking ahead of [them]” (8). Looking back, Halley understands that her life was never the same after Scarlett entered it.

Halley calls her mother, Julia Cooke, a therapist and author, despite it being the middle of the night.