It is the summer of 1989 in Miles City, a sleepy Montana town. The narrator Cameron Post describes the day her parents die. She and her best friend Irene Klauson are nearly 13. Cameron’s Grandma Post drops her and Irene off at swim practice. Grandma Post is “minding” (3) Cameron while her parents are away on a camping trip at Quake Lake, the same site her mother almost died as a little girl during the Montana-Yellowstone earthquake. In the parking lot, Irene and Cameron fall into their competitive habits until they both remember their secret—that they have kissed—and grow sheepish with one another. After a day of swimming, shoplifting, and stolen kisses, the two girls go back to Irene’s family ranch for a sleepover. A late-night phone call awakens the household. Cameron’s life changes after Irene’s father knocks at the door: “I still had parents before that knock, and […] I didn’t after” (24). Cameron learns her parents have died in a car crash.

Days after the car accident, concerned neighbors stop by Cameron’s house with copious amounts of food. Grandma Post thanks them politely but keeps them away from Cameron.