“We can only handle so much truth at any given moment, I suppose. So instead, I said nothing.” 

At 10, Jay experiences for the first time the reality of death, through a puppy abandoned by its mother. The experience unsettles him, but he refuses to ask his uncle what the family did with the dead puppy. Jay accepts the limits of his ability to engage reality, preferring to protect himself from difficult truths.

“Does anyone truly get anyone, Jay?”

This weed-induced wisdom offered by Jay’s friend Seth, while the two exchange joints playing hooky on the roof of a nearby elementary school, sets the agenda for Jay’s painful education into the stubborn mystery of others, the impossibility of understanding people.

“I don’t want to be another one of those people who just pretend like they don’t know about the suffering, like they don’t see it every single day, like they don’t walk past it on their way to school or work.” 

In one of his earliest letters, Jun, only 12 at the time, responds to an encounter with a homeless woman on the street who is trying to sell her baby for food. Jun, as indignant as he is compassionate, unintentionally defines exactly who Jay is in his suburban life of drift.