“I wake up. But wake up isn’t quite right. That implies sleeping […] I come to.” 

The narrative opens with something not being quite right about Cady’s circumstances, thus throwing the reader into the mysterious opening scene from the very first sentence and causing alarm.

“I don’t know anything. What’s wrong with me, where I am, who they are. And when I try to think about who I am, what I get is: nothing. A big gray hole. All I know for sure is that I must be in trouble.” 

The protagonist has no recollection of who she is or of what’s going on, further adding to the plot and the immediate trouble she’s in. Not only is she in dire circumstances, she doesn’t know why she is in trouble.

“Someone was obviously looking for something, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know if they found it.”

This quote is forewarning for the rest of the narrative, as the reader comes to learn that the men are indeed looking for something that they think the narrator has. This is central to the plot of the narrative.