As she did in The Outsiders, Hinton employs a frame to the story, the main body of which is a series of events that occurred five years earlier. The story is framed by the first and last chapters, which

describe the surprise meeting of Rusty James, the book's narrator, and Steve Hays, who had been his best friend during the time the story describes. The story is, in effect, a piece of Rusty James's memory, and memory, the ability to remember things (or, conversely, to forget them) is a concern that appears throughout the narrative.

There is not much cause and effect in this story. In The Outsiders there is a random element to the act of violence that triggers the story—the stabbing in the park—but once that has occurred the rest of the story proceeds with absolute fidelity to the motivations of...