Los Angeles

Los Angeles is the primary backdrop of the novel. This is the city in California where the narrator has grown up with her mother, father, grandmother, and older sister Debbie. At the start of the novel, the narrator has just graduated from high school and is therefore discovering the city as a young adult for the first time. She particularly does so by way of her sister Debbie. Because Debbie has been on her own since she was 18, she already has an established lifestyle and social sphere. However, the more time that the narrator spends in Debbie's version of Los Angeles, the more fraught the narrator's relationship with the city becomes.

Although the narrator learns at the end of the novel that Debbie has moved to Boston, the narrator returns to her life in Los Angeles in the final chapter. She has made the decision to a...