Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses instances of codependency and the death of a parent.

Macy, 17, is the female protagonist of the novel who is blonde, “somewhat short for [her] age, with a round face, brown eyes, and faint freckles across [her] nose” (25). She’s a former track star who quit her passion for running after witnessing the tragic death of her father a year and a half ago. Since then, Macy has felt extreme guilt for sleeping in instead of joining him immediately when he invited her to run with him that fateful morning.

Macy struggles with sleep due to nightmares about her father and the fear that “something bad would happen if [she] ever allowed [her]self to be fully unconscious” (47). Macy yearns for any facet of control and aims for perfection, and to be anything but only elicits more attention and pity from others, who only see her as the girl who watched her father die. Her perfect boyfriend, Jason, and her hard-to-please mother, Deborah, only heighten the expectations of perfection that Macy struggles to live up to, which causes her to live a sheltered and miserable life within the narrow confines of minimal acceptable behaviors.