Summary

Girtle recounts the early weeks of Jody and Mice’s arrival in the Reef Way area of Miami, claiming to have pieced the story together. Neighbors immediately took against Mice because of her unusual appearance and were unrelentingly unkind and critical towards her. At length, Girtle recalls hearing a conversation between a selection of neighbors, whom she names but it remains difficult to tell them apart and distinguish between them. A man known as The Blur ran past. The neighbors quizzed him about what he was doing and he revealed that he was re-sitting his exams in order to graduate from high school, despite being forty years old, because he failed the tests when he was a teenager. The neighbors expressed skepticism about The Blur’s ability to pass the test now. Overhearing this conversation, Girtle realized that The Blur’s real name was...