Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to sexual abuse and coercion.

At a park in Northern California during the summer of 1969, 14-year-old Evie Boyd notices a small group of girls walking through the park like “royalty in exile” despite their long hair and shabby, dirty clothes (3-4). She’s mesmerized by their style and compares herself to them; she notices how other women react to the girls as if there’s danger in their wake as they move through the park, “[s]leek and thoughtless as sharks breaching the water” (5).

As an adult, Evie is between personal care jobs and staying at vacation house that belongs to her friend Dan. It’s near midnight when fear grips her. She can hear the sound of the door lock, then voices as the intruders enter the house. She recalls the scene of murders that occurred in California the summer she was 14. Convinced she will be murdered, Evie is paralyzed with fear and decides she will not attempt to run. The “intruders” turn out to be Dan’s son Julian, a young adult, and his girlfriend Sasha, who don’t know that Dan has let Evie borrow the house.