In contemporary California, a nameless, male fifteen year old high school student— also the story’s narrator— pens a short story from the perspective of a preemie in a hospital ward. The story garners the attention of his teacher, who praises him for his “poignant” work and “brilliant retelling of Jewish history,” and the student’s father, who sends him to an arts summer camp in Massachusetts. 

The camp, located at a boarding school, is full of artistically inclined high schoolers who talk of music composition, fine art, and film. The writer meets his roommate, Chet, a red-headed, Red Sox cap-wearing trombonist who lives in a neighborhood near the camp. As the two fall asleep in their bunk bed, the narrator hears Chet sobbing quietly from the top bunk. The writer begins to write a novel, The Cry of the Trombone, using Chet as an influence— and near copy— for the main character. 

Chet and the writer grow close, weathering the pretentious conversations of their peers in the summer camp cafeteria together. Chet invites the writer to his house for dinner, and reveals he has a twin sister who is sick in bed with a mysterious illness. The narrator talks with Chet’s sister through her bedroom window and he notices a cross shape on her lower abdomen. 

Returning to camp, the writer models a novel character, Miranda, after Chet’s sister. When the writer asks about the cross shape on her stomach, Chet reveals that she has neuroblastoma and is dying. Later that night, the writer bikes to Chet’s house to visit his sister through the window, and the two of them overhear a conversation between her parents about how they can’t pay the hospital bills. 

One day at camp, Chet finds the writer’s manuscript for The Cry of the Trombone; betrayed, he decides to move back home. The two never speak again. The writer interjects from the present moment, noting how ordinary real-Chet seems on his Facebook profile. The writer reflects on the last time he saw Chet the day after camp, sitting with his sister and making funny faces. In a metaphoric nod to his relationship with Chet, he recalls telling his father about what he learned in his writing class: that “some stories take years and you never get them right.”