Content Warning: Prep contains fatphobia, suicide, and bigoted representations of race, ethnicity, and gender.

Lee Fiora comes from a working-class family, and she lives in South Bend, Indiana (Midwest America), but she attends the prestigious and expensive Ault preparatory school in New England. The prep school is a boarding school, so Lee lives there during the school year—though the school also has “day students” who don’t live on campus. Lee’s dad owns a mattress store in South Bend and can’t afford to pay the full tuition, but Lee receives a scholarship that makes it affordable.

Lee’s first semester at Ault—the fall of her freshman year—doesn’t have an auspicious start. In Ancient History class, Jamie Lorison, a freshman student, gives a presentation on Roman architects, but Lee prepared a presentation on the same subject. Though Lee was talkative throughout middle school in Indiana, she’s quiet in her Ault classes, so she gingerly explains the issue to the icy teacher, Mrs. Van der Hoef, who tells her that her topic is athletics. Lee asks to go tomorrow, but Mrs. Van der Hoef doesn’t think that’s fair to the students scheduled for tomorrow, so Lee runs back to the dorms.

Lee bumps into Gates Medkowski, who’s tall and attractive.