The novel flashes back to Dickie’s past.

As Dickie begins his first year at Trinity College, he attends the university’s student organizations fair. At the stand for the Historical Society, he meets an “ugly” young man who accosts him with strange questions about animal and insect mating rituals. For Dickie, this odd conversation is yet another example of how he doesn’t fit in at Trinity just as he doesn’t belong at home.

The narrative returns to the present.

Dickie, Victor, and PJ are constructing a well. Victor insists a well will be helpful when environmental disasters create society-wide breakdown, insisting that they keep the well a secret because if other people know about it, they will invade it when the climate crisis hits. Imelda is against PJ spending so much time with such a strange man, but PJ and Dickie have fun and are patching up their tight-knit relationship. They even camp out in the woods, like Dickie and Frank used to do.

Dickie drives Cass to Dublin to move her into her new place. He’s excited about spending time with her one-on-one, even though she makes it clear that she’d rather drive with

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