On her last day of freshman year at Harding-Pencroft Academy, Ana wakes up to prepare for the freshman trials that upcoming weekend. She goes out to the sea to have a morning swim with her older brother, Dev, a senior who is in Shark House. Shark House is a tactical and militaristic house, as opposed to Ana’s own Dolphin House, which is focused on communication skills. The two swim with their friend Socrates, who is “a gorgeous animal […] a young male bottlenose” dolphin (8). Dev gives Ana a good luck charm for her trials, a pearl necklace fashioned from a pearl that belonged to their now-deceased mother. Both of their parents died in an accident two years prior, and so Dev and Ana have only each other. As Ana swims, something with which she is usually comfortable, she begins to feel a sense of foreboding about the water.

After her swim, Ana grabs breakfast and returns to her room. There she finds her two friends and roommates: Nelinha, from House Cephalopod, which is focused on engineering and technology, and Ester, from House Orca, which is focused on education and healing. Ana also finds Ester’s service dog, Top, “the cutest emotional-support animal you’ll ever meet” (14).