After she was caught setting a record store on fire, and then trying to light a fire in the dressing room of her mother's department store, the narrator was sent to a psychiatric ward for about a year. Newly released and living with her mother and her new husband, Mr. Arnette, she is trying desperately to adjust. As prescribed by her psychiatrist, she takes anti-depressants that make her sleep all day and feel numb to the world even when she's awake. Despite her fogginess, she knows that her mother is still having an affair with her father, who she hasn't seen since she was five, but who has been engaging in this affair since she was six. One day, on her way home from the psychiatrist, Mr. Arnette asks her why she doesn't stop taking her medicine if it makes her feel so bad. That night she flushes all her pills down the toilet. The next morning, she wakes up early and makes everyone bacon, causing her mother to suspect something is going on. She spends the whole day looking at photos of her father, but when her mother and Mr. Arnette arrive home, Mr. Arnette is curious about the man in the photos. That night, as her mother drives away, Mr. Arnette and the narrator follow the mother all the way to a motel where they see the affair taking place. Furious, Mr. Arnette stops at a carnival, where they ride the Ferris wheel together.