A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

How it opens

April May opens with a confession: she has been doing everything she can to convince people they are safe, and she says they are not. She was not there for much of what follows, so her friends help tell the story. A few months after April disappeared, her ex-girlfriend Maya still refuses to believe she is dead and spends much of her time on the Som, a site built for solving sequences from the Dream that now draws conspiracy theorists. There Maya follows posts about lab break-ins and dolphins dying in the Delaware River, a pattern that feels to her like a Dream sequence. After a fight over dinner with her parents, who think April is dead, Maya walks out, saying she will be in New Jersey.

Who you meet early

• April MayApril May opens the book in her own voice. She says she has been doing everything she can to convince people they are safe, and that they are not. A few months after she disappeared, most people believe she is dead, and her body has not been found.
• MayaMaya still refuses, a few months after April disappeared, to believe her ex-girlfriend is dead, though most people have moved on. She spends much of her time on the Som, the sequence-solving site she helped build, and after a fight with her parents she walks out to look for April, saying she will be in New Jersey.