Content Warning: This novel uses offensive terminology for physical disability, which this guide reproduces in direct quotes.

The book opens with 17-year-old Ezra Faulkner theorizing that everyone, at some point, has a tragedy waiting to happen, “a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen” (1). When Ezra was 12 years old, he and a group of friends celebrated Toby’s 12th birthday at Disneyland. Toby Ellicott was Ezra’s best friend, and it was here that Toby has his “moment.” Toby and Ezra sit behind a Japanese family on the Thunder Mountain Railway roller coaster. The boy in front of Toby stands up just as the coaster races into a tunnel. The severed head of the boy, complete with a Micky Mouse hat, lands in Toby’s hands and remains there for the remainder of the ride. This event scars Toby, and in the aftermath of unavoidable “getting head” jokes, Toby and Ezra drift apart. In Ezra’s eyes, Toby fades “into obscurity,” while Ezra becomes an “inexplicable social success” (4).

Five years later, Ezra is an “embarrassingly popular” tennis star in high school (5). It is prom weekend. Ezra arrives at Jonas Beidecker’s pool party late, having had an argument with his girlfriend,

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