Summary

Each chapter presents the perspective of a different character by the omniscient narrator. The first chapter is narrated in third-person present with a close focus on February Waters, the headmistress of River Valley School for the Deaf. She remembers stabbing herself in the ear when she was nine because she wanted to be Deaf like the rest of her family. In the current moment, though, she is busy discussing two missing children with the Colson County Sheriff’s Office. After she finishes a press conference announcing that Austin Workman and Eliot Quin are missing, she runs into Mr. Serrano, who tells her that his daughter, Charlie, is also missing.

Chapter Two is introduced as happening six months earlier and is narrated in third-person past with a close-focus on Charlie. Charlie’s father had won custody of her the summer before sophomore year, which...