Prologue - Chapter 7 Summary

An unidentified narrator's parents are killed on Jellicoe Road in a car crash, which the narrator and the narrator's brother, Webb, survive when they are found by a kid named Fitz on a stolen bike. Tate, the girl in the other car crawls through the wreckage to sit with the narrator and Webb.

Twenty-two years pass. Seventeen year-old Taylor Markham, boarding at the Jellicoe School, dreams of a boy in a tree, and wants to be up there with him, feeling like she belongs. They sing and listen to music on a discman from the 1980s, and Taylor tells the boy stories about her life and her school, including someone called the Hermit, who shot himself.

Taylor and her friend Raffaela care for younger girls. Taylor doesn't believe in anyone or anything, yet looks forward to her senior year...