Ethan, a 13-year-old boy living in rural Nebraska, stands with his best friend, Scoop, in a field behind Scoop’s house, looking at an abandoned car. The car, a Firebird, belonged to Scoop’s older brother, Eric, who died by suicide the previous year. Today would’ve been Eric’s 19th birthday. Scoop spent hours making a cake to bury next to the car. Ethan remembers how, growing up, Scoop used to draw elaborate maps of imaginary worlds only to burn them, wanting Ethan to be the only one who ever saw.

Ethan remembers sleeping over at Scoop’s house four nights after Eric’s funeral and seeing Scoop’s dad drive Eric’s Firebird into a field from Scoop’s bedroom window. However, the next morning Scoop claimed to have been the one who drove the car into the field, and said his dad then threw the key in the woods to punish him. Ethan wondered why Scoop would lie, but never told Scoop what he had seen. The two made a game of searching for the key. On one of these searches, Scoop told Ethan that Eric had been “messed up”; for example, Eric believed there were tiny cameras in dragonflies and certain everyday noises would make him moody and temperamental. Ethan wondered if Scoop exaggerated Eric’s eccentricities in an attempt to explain his death, since Ethan had always seen his friend’s older brother as quiet, gentle, and confident. Ethan recalls one night when Eric woke him and Scoop up at midnight to drive to a 24-hour burger king in Lincoln, where the girl working would give them unlimited free food. Eric had frequently left on midnight drives, and the two younger boys always speculated about where he went. Even though Burger King was an anticlimactic destination, Ethan was excited to be invited. Later, at the funeral, Scoop had said, “It was so obvious he’d pull shit like this.” Ethan disagreed.

Until this day, Eric and Scoop had avoided the car, since its proximity Eric’s suicide made them uneasy, but they talked frequently about everything they’d do with it when they fixed it up. The two boys place the cake into the hole they’ve dug and Scoop lights candles. Ethan, as narrator, reveals that the following summer Scoop will move away, the two will eventually lose touch, the Firebird will be towed from the field, and Ethan’s dad will be hired to mow the field, but for now he doesn’t know that yet. However, as Scoop begins to bury the cake, Ethan feels a sense that the summer is ending, even though it has just begun, and that the rest of their lives are approaching. He tells Scoop to wait, and Scoop stops burying the cake.

Ethan recounts how, that night four nights after Eric’s funeral, he’d followed Scoop’s dad into the field and when Scoop’s dad walked deeper into the field, away from the Firebird, Ethan had hidden the key to the Firebird himself, beneath the seat. Ethan almost confesses this to Scoop and tells him the key has been here the whole time, but he doesn’t. Instead, inexplicably even to himself, he grabs a fistful of the dirt-covered cake and eats it. He’s worried Scoop will be upset, but Scoop eats a handful, too. The two start laughing. Ethan’s sense that the summer is ending disappears, and everything feels expansive and possible again. Scoop grabs a handful of cake and throws it in Ethan’s face, laughing, so Ethan grabs a handful and chases after his friend through the field.