“I thought I was doing a good job of giving the relationship a real chance, but in the end Sebastian recognized my indifference, and he was right. I didn’t care about him. I didn’t care about any of them. There was only the one. And that one is long gone.”

An adult Percy reflects on a recent breakup. Early on in the book, Fortune reveals that Percy has had a string of meaningless relationships in early adulthood. Percy’s awareness of her lack of investment in these relationships, and the way that she connects them to the man she loved and lost, sets up the tropes of “Soulmates” and “Second Chances.”

“[T]he more horror I read, the more I grew to love the writing behind the story—how the authors made impossible situations believable. I liked how each book was both predictable and unique, comforting and unexpected. Safe but never boring.”

A young Percy describes why she loves the horror genre. A love for horror stories and movies is one of Percy’s defining character traits, especially when she is a teenager. She eventually introduces Sam to horror too, and it becomes something shared and intimate between them. Horror stories and movies are a recurring motif in the book, pointing to the theme of Friendship as the Foundation of First Love and marking important milestones in Percy and Sam’s relationship.

“[E]very so often I catch myself fantasizing about leaving the city—finding a small place on the water to write, working at a restaurant on the side to pay the bills—and my skin starts feeling too tight, like my life doesn’t fit.”

An adult Percy reflects on how her life in the city doesn’t quite feel complete. She recognizes that there is a different kind of life she longs for and a specific place she feels at home. However, her reluctance to even think about it, let alone act on these feelings, hints at something unresolved in the past that she is running from.