“The residents of Wakarusa, Indiana, could spin gossip faster than a spider spins its web. [...] [T]he Wakarusa gossip chain would flap their jaws, chewing the tidbit over so thoroughly that by the time they’d finally spat it out again, the Truth was misshapen and unrecognizable, warped into the Story.”

The narrator sets the stage for what kind of town Wakarusa is: One whose inhabitants value the “Story” over the “Truth,” regardless of the consequences. This will remain true as Margot tries to dissect fact from fiction to uncover the truth of what happened to January Jacobs. These lines imply that Wakarusa residents may not be trusted, and that the pursuit of an entertaining piece of gossip or convenient narrative will always matter more to them than any real justice.

“Margot began to envision a faceless man standing between the two houses, playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe with her friend’s bedroom window and her own. At night she’d lay in bed, squeezing her fists so tight her fingernails drew blood.”

Margot recalls learning about the circumstances of January’s death and how this affected her as a child. Believing that a mysterious stranger murdered her friend, Margot imagines the murderer deciding between her room and January’s, with Margot narrowly escaping January’s fate. Margot is not only wracked with guilt over this throughout her life, but this quote also introduces a coping mechanism that follows Margot into adulthood: squeezing her palms so tightly that she draws blood. Whenever Margot does this, it is an echo of how that initial fear in the aftermath of January’s death continues to affect her.