Since her mother's suicide, high school junior Marin has been able to see others' pain as colors and shapes, but what she sees in the head of classmate Cassie, who forced her to participate in a weird conjoining rite, is much more frightening and deadly.
After graduating from high school, class valedictorian Julia travels to Poultney, Vermont, to visit her older sister, and while she is there she learns about long-held family secrets that have shaped her into the person she has grown up to be.