Content Warning: This section includes discussion of racial discrimination, ableism, pet death, and grief.

Julia Marks ascribes two characteristics to herself in the opening chapter of the novel: She is short, and she is grieving the loss of her dog, Ramon. By centering these two ideas in the novel’s opening pages, the author invites the reader to focus on how Julia’s attitude toward both her stature and her grief might develop, signaling that these ideas will be tied together within Julia’s character arc. The first-person narration shows Julia consistently tying her current surroundings or feelings back to memories of Ramon, immersing readers in the recursive nature of processing grief.

At the start of the summer, Julia wants to get over losing Ramon but still “[looks] all the time for Ramon” around the house (4), showing how grief creates ambivalence. Julia has contradictory desires that cause her to feel stuck: She both does and does not want to move on. The first element Julia puts into her summer scrapbook is hair from Ramon’s collar, symbolizing how she’ll experience the summer through the lens of her grief. She chooses not to put Ramon’s dog tag in the scrapbook because “[she’s] not ready” to treat Ramon as something wholly from her past (38).