Brynn Gallagher is the novel’s teenage protagonist who, in her senior year of high school, moves with her family back to her hometown, where she interns with a true-crime show and investigates the four-year unsolved murder of her eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Larkin. Brynn is also one of the novel’s two narrators. Brynn is ambitious and driven, coming from a family with impressive jobs and talents. At first, she fears becoming like her Uncle Nick, whom her parents view as adrift and devoid of purpose because he’s taken a while to decide on a career (teaching). So Brynn prioritizes her future career above all else, including her personal moral compass and her relationships. She accepts a prestigious internship but doesn’t tell anyone outside her immediate family, afraid it might upset them. When her friends find out anyway, Brynn learns to draw ethical and safety boundaries in her journalism. For example, she decides that her journalistic “objectivity” is not worth lying to friends, exploiting people, breaking into houses, or hanging around violent people.

Although Brynn learns to set boundaries with her career, she doesn’t give it up altogether. Instead, she learns to pair her career and its pursuit of the truth with her core value of honesty.