Chapter Two: Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Daisy spends the morning and early afternoon alone on a café patio, nursing a cold coffee and a half-eaten croissant while waiting to catch sight of her boyfriend, Noah, who has stopped texting her. She's been there for roughly three hours, stretching out her stay so the server won't ask her to leave.

While she waits, she observes the dead—translucent figures that only she can see—clustering around a breakfast place across the street. They're drawn to someone's suffering inside, pressing their faces against the windows like vultures waiting for a tragedy to emerge. The dead avoid happy people, Daisy notes; happiness repels them. Some dead are worse than others—dangerous ones that blend in with the living, solid and opaque—and she's learned that lesson the hard way.

When a mismatched couple exits the restaurant, Daisy snaps to attention. The tall man is Noah, and the small blond girl beside him is someone Daisy has already researched online: Stephanie. Daisy knows her name, her school, her Starbucks order, her closest friends. Stephanie is white, a fact Daisy keeps insisting doesn't matter even as it keeps prodding at her.

Daisy recalls their last outing together. They went to Noah's place first—