A Heart in a Body in the World

The novel opens by introducing the protagonist, Annabelle Agnelli, a teenager living in Seattle, on a March evening. Annabelle is picking up food at Dick’s when two young men in line start to catcall her and one tries to grab her arm. Traumatized, Annabelle leaves the restaurant and starts running. In that moment she feels “only the need to claw herself from the avalanche and get away” (10). She doesn’t know why she starts running or where she’s going, but “sometimes you just snap” (2). As she’s running, Annabelle realizes she could continue running rather than return, thinking, “I could keep going and going” (3). Annabelle finally stops running when she reaches a park in a part of the city she’s never been to before. Her phone has been ringing in her pocket, and she answers it. It’s Annabelle’s mother, Gina Agnelli, who is worried because Annabelle is hours late getting home. Annabelle tells her mom that she doesn’t want to come home. She has money in her wallet, and she will be spending the night at a Best Western hotel she passed earlier.

Gina tells Annabelle that her behavior is just an effect of PTSD.