A drunk college boy falls off a balcony.

His body is found by the head groundskeeper, while he's smoking a cigarette. His wife worries that him finding the body will cause old traumas to resurface.

The student who threw a party the boy tagged along to that night is suspended and has to put his plans for grad school on home. His relationship ends.

The college chaplain attempts to get in touch with the boy's parents, who aren't picking up. He feels a lot of anxiety about telling them. Eventually, the mom picks up.

The RA who was responsible for the student was the last one who spoke to the boy, when he bummed a cigarette from her the previous night outside, wearing no shoes in the snow, before she went to bed and he went to the balcony he eventually fell off of. She wishes their conversation had been more interesting, something she, an aspiring writer, could write about.

At the end of each character's section, the narrator says they have a story, but "this is not that story." Then, the narrator speculates about how the boy got to the balcony he fell off and how he fell. He imagines he was bending over the balcony to look at something he saw below. After, the narrator directly addresses the telling of the story itself, discussing the line between truth and fiction. He reprises a summary of all the stories this story could be, then ends: "So what, then, is the story? Only this: A boy died."