Book 1: Chapter 2, The Joy of the Worm Summary

The story suddenly jumps to the present day in the next chapter. Here, we listen to the adult Oly as she watches a person named Miranda and keeps an eye out for her blind, deaf and mentally unstable mother, Crystal Lil. Oly does not let her mother know that she lives in the same tenement building as her mother, because she says that her mother has chosen to forget her.

Oly follows both Crystal Lil and Miranda on some days. Crystal Lil goes to a home on the top of a hill and screams that she used to live there, indicating how unstable her mental state is now. Crystal Lil otherwise spends her time trying to watch television with a huge magnifying glass in front of the screen.

Miranda is more...