A young woman arrives at her friend Luna's house for book club with several other women in a quaint Philadelphia suburb. Before they begin their discussion of the book, someone asks Luna how her week has gone and she reveals to them that it has been a particularly difficult week. A school nearby the private girls school where she teaches AP English experienced a school shooting. The school shuts down for several weeks, and the students there are sent to the surrounding schools, including the one where she works, in the meantime. Her class gains two students who survived the shooting, Salma and Nicki. Luna does her best to get to know the students and their needs during the difficult time, reaching out to them one on one and offering a safe space for them to talk about their trauma, but both girls refuse to open up to her. One day, she pairs her class into discussion groups, and Nicki asks who Jessica is paired with, even though there is no student named Jessica in her class. Salma looks at the empty desk Nicki is referencing as "Jessica," and immediately panics, falling and breaking her wrist as she flees the classroom. Luna goes to visit her at the nurse's office, and Salma opens up to her for the first time about her experience with the shooting. Salma explains that her grandmother once told her that if you open your eyes, you can begin to see Death all around you in the form of normal looking people and animals who are, in actuality, the living dead. Salma does not understand this until the shooting. Rather than run, she hid in the closet with a fellow classmate. While in the closet hiding, she realized the girl was not breathing and understood that she had been opened up to seeing Death as her grandmother told her. Luna is shaken by this story, and struggles to process this trauma that is not even her own. Her friend listens to this story and in an attempt to change the subject to something lighter for the sake of the entire group, she tells Luna how beautiful her home is. She mentions how impressed she is with the hardwood floors being spotless despite the cocker spaniel dog she has been petting and admiring the entirety of the night, assuming the dog's nails would leave scratches. Luna looks confused and tells her they do not have a dog, and the young woman realizes that she, like Salma, has seen the living dead.