Adelaide “Addy” Prentiss is with Maeve and Bronwyn Rojas at the Rojas family home. It is the summer after Bronwyn’s freshman year of college, and they have gathered to watch a speech being televised on public access television. The person giving the speech is Addy’s former boyfriend, Jake Riordan, who was sentenced to juvenile detention until the age of 25 for assaulting Addy. This attack came after Jake helped a classmate, Simon Kelleher, end his life in what appeared to be a homicide. Four of Simon’s classmates—Addy, Bronwyn, Cooper Clay, and Nate Macauley, dubbed the Bayview Four—were suspects in the murder due to secrets Simon was about to publish on his app About That.

Just under three months ago, the group was attacked again when a man named Jared Jackson lured several students and Eli Kleinfelter, Addy’s brother-in-law and a lawyer with the nonprofit Until Proven, into a game of truth or dare. A young man, Brandon, was killed during a dare. Jared also planted a bomb at Eli and Ashton Prentiss’s wedding rehearsal. This experience expanded the Bayview Four to nine members, so Addy suggests they change the name to Bayview Crew.