Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of imprisonment, physical and emotional abuse, mental health crises, and gun violence. The source text also includes frequent descriptions of situations in which the protagonist’s mental health is openly questioned by others.

The novel opens with the narrator, Juliette, receiving the news that from now on she will have a cellmate. She has been kept in a psychiatric institution for 264 days, and she hasn’t spoken to anyone since she got there. Juliette is kept in the psychiatric institution by the minions of The Reestablishment, a political group that took her away from her parents’ house and locked her up under the pretense of helping society. She is there because of “something outside [her] control” (1). (The narrative will reveal that she accidentally killed a boy with her lethal touch.) Juliette does not know where she is, but she knows that it took them 6 hours and 37 minutes to get there. Her parents never said goodbye to her. Juliette has been alone for so long that she needs to practice how to speak before her cellmate arrives. She falls asleep, and when she awakes, she is startled to see that her cellmate is a boy and tries to avoid him at all costs.