Summary

When Chapter 4 opens, Haley is in seventh grade. Disillusioned by her friends at the private school, whom she perceives to be mean and unworldly, she started spending her afternoons at the public library, reading magazines and bringing coffee to her aunt Candace. One afternoon there she met a pair of kids her age, Walker and Becca, hanging out in the Periodicals section. Walker invited her to something he called “progressive dinner” (282), which she attended the following week. She met Walker and his friends in the woods, and then they went to one of the local empty vacation homes, quietly broke in, and hung out there for several hours – not defacing or stealing anything, because “their presence, they understood, was the defacement” (285).

Daisy’s, the diner where Mark spends many of his morning, put out a For Sale sign amid a steep decline in business...