Summary

In the Prologue, the narrator says it was his mother who drove their 15-year-old self to the police station. They pass by the playground where the narrator imagines blood by the jungle gym. He thinks about how the adults should have done something about Charlie and not left it to him. He thinks of his best friend James waiting on the playground for Charlie and Billy. The narrator’s mother says that everything is going to be okay. Twenty-five years later, the narrator still remembers those words and how she meant well, but parents are often wrong.

Part One, Chapter One opens with Detective Amanda Beck waking up at noon. The third-person narrator says a boy was being killed, but nobody knew that yet. She goes to Rosewood Gardens to visit her father’s grave. His gravestone is a simple rectangular shape with...