Sal describes her homesickness for the family farm in Bybanks. When her father first brought her to Euclid roughly a year ago, she was dismayed to find the car stopping in front of a house without any trees. As her father tried to persuade her to greet his friend Margaret Cadaver—the owner of the house—Sal noticed a girl watching her from a next-door window. Sal later became friends with this girl—Phoebe Winterbottom—and told her story to her grandparents during a recent road trip. She likens Phoebe’s story to a plaster wall in her home in Bybanks; when Sal’s mother left, her father began pulling down the plaster, eventually revealing a fireplace behind it. Similarly, Sal says, she has realized that her own story lies just below the surface of Phoebe’s.

Sal skips back to the moment when Gram and Gramps announce their plans for a cross-country trip. Sal’s father encourages her to go, ostensibly to keep an eye on his eccentric and accident-prone parents, but really because Lewiston is the place where Sal’s mother is “resting peacefully” (5). Sal feels an urgent need to reach Lewiston by her mother’s birthday: “During the week before we left, the sound of the wind was hurry, hurry, hurry, and at night even the silent darkness whispered rush, rush, rush” (6).