Meredith Shale is the heroine and narrator of the novel. She is a fifteen-year-old girl who was raped by her father just more than three years ago. Her father had been sentenced to serve nine years in jail but has gotten out of jail in three years on good behavior. She had thought that she would be grown and gone by the time he got out of jail. As it stands, however, Meredith's mother seems blind to all of the hurt that Charles has caused her daughter. She had sold their house at the time of Meredith's attack to pay for her husband's lawyer. Now she rents a condo for him in the same complex where she and Meredith live.
