After three years away, eighteen-year-old senior Cora Boone is finally free and returning to her hometown of Stilllight, deep in Southern Appalachia.

Her record runs a mile long, stacked with detentions, suspensions, arrests, and every bad decision she could make before she was incarcerated. But in all that chaos, she left behind the one boy who understood her.

While Cora was locked away in the Marrowbend Institute, fellow senior Hollis Greer was quietly diagnosed with a rare seizure disorder. Hollis only told those he needed to. He learned to hide it, paying close attention to his body and keeping a careful hold on what no one else was meant to see.

Nothing threatens that careful balance like Cora Boone walking back into Stilllight. When Hollis’s iron grip on his own body breaks, the violent fallout threatens to lock him inside the very nightmare Cora just escaped.