The story takes place in present-day Santa Monica, California, an area where high school students like Sarah enjoy sunny beaches, movies, rollerskating, Disneyland, and other "healthy" settings and activities. Sarah shares all these with Dane during the early development of their relationship. It is only after she begins to spend time in his shabby apartment, with its bare, transient look that contrasts sharply with her own home, that her disillusionment begins.

Although the beach area of Southern California is often depicted in literature as an artificial environment, for Sarah it represents vitality and reality, whereas she perceives her lover's depressing and claustrophobic flat as an alien environment that adds to her growing sense of discomfort with the melancholy Dane.