Maddy does not want to be a teacher. She often treats her young students with the same indifference that her alcoholic, widowed father shows her. She is biding her last few hours at Grace Evangelical Church and School with a mug of vodka-spiked coffee until she can escape the whiny kids for the weekend. All the other teachers and students have gone home, but Luke Dixon’s slacker dad still has not picked him up. She cannot help but feel a little sorry for the puny kid. He asks her to pretend he is Davey Schwartz, the bully who picks on him. The fake identity gives Luke some much-needed confidence, and he chats animatedly as Maddy counts down the minutes.

Just then, a gnarled man taps on the window. Maddy runs to the door to find that another man has entered the unsecured building. They introduce themselves as Meat and Mouth, and the former brandishes a switchblade. As Maddy tries to drag Luke into the kitchen and lock the door, she hits her head. The men insist that there’s nothing to worry about—they are traveling, and they just need a refuge from the snow. But the crazed gleam in their eyes says otherwise. Luke is on the verge of tears. Maddy calls him Davey in front of the men and silently wills him to be brave. It seems to work.

Meat goes back outside. A slightly sloshed Mr. Dixon, Luke's dad, pulls up to the school. He does not notice Maddy’s wound, and she tells him that Mouth is a new student teacher. Luke runs to his father’s side, and they get into his truck. Before Luke can close the door, Meat lunges in and slashes Mr. Dixon’s throat. His limp body slides out of the open door.

Meat drags the shocked child back inside. He and Mouth say it would make them sick to kill a woman and a child, so they leave them in the school and escape in the truck. Maddy cradles Luke to her chest as he sobs. A clergy member will be at the church tomorrow, or maybe someone will notice a red sea and a dead body in the snow before night falls and rescue them. Luke will go to live with his grandparents, and she may never see him again. But in this moment, she is all he has.