At age 10, Annie John believes that only people she does not know can die. In the summer, she feeds her family’s ducks and pig, and from her yard, she watches funerals at the cemetery down the street. She doesn’t realize that children can die until she sees a funeral for a child. She fears the dead, as does everyone with whom she interacts, because one never knows when the dead might “show up” again. Annie believes that if one of them follows a living person, the dead won’t give up until the living person dies, too; her mother knows several people who died this way.

One day, Nalda, who is younger than Annie, dies in Annie’s mother’s arms. Annie didn’t know Nalda well, but she knows the girl liked to eat mud and died of a fever. Nalda’s mother is inconsolable, so Annie’s mother prepares Nalda’s body for burial. Knowing that her mother’s hands have stroked and bathed the dead girl, Annie comes to view her mother’s hands negatively, and for a long time, she refuses to allow her mother to touch either her or her food.

Annie says that she loves a schoolmate named Sonia and that this is why she torments the girl.