Starting from when he is 12 years old, a boy imagines that he is a detective in a fictional city called Beck. He imagines that his parents are the landlords of his apartment complex, and that they are simple, unimaginative people. His brother is the district attorney and his nemesis, and his sister is his secretary, who he sometimes loves and considers marrying if not for his lone wolf personality. One day, a man named Mickelson moves into the neighborhood, and the boy wonders if the man is actually him from the future. The boy starts keeping a diary to record his taught and keep a record for his future self to read. He delights in imagining that aliens will find his diary in the future and be so touched by it that they will publish it and decide to call off the intergalactic war against humanity. The boy decides to break into his neighbor's house, and he tries to search for evidence about his identity. Mickleson enters the house, but the boy successfully sneaks out of the house as Mickleson watches the news. As he stares down at the photo he took, of Mickelson when he was younger, he feels that it could have been a photo of him as well. Then, he blacks out. The boy begins to develop these blank spots in his memory, during which he loses minutes of hours of his time. He never knows what he did during then. Later, after he's grown, he tries to explain these blank spots to his wife. She is worried. He reads his diary and muses about why is he had been so fascinated by Mickleson. He decides it was because Mickelson seemed suspicious, and he had been in despair, thinking that he might grow up to be like that. He remembers how he felt like an outsider in his family as a boy, overhearing his parents' arguments but not understanding them. He reminisces that he has not been to Beck in decades, not after the family moved after his parents had gone bankrupt. His sister got into a car accident when she was nineteen, and she is living in a group home now. His brother has become a physical therapist and tells him about all their childhood trauma when he visits. The man does not believe him. They have all lost touch with their mother. His father passed away years later. He had made up a girlfriend to tell his father about, and he feels a bit guilty that his father passed away without ever doubting its veracity. He remembers his mother's temper flaring. His brother says that she was a psycho parent, but he tells him that he does not think about it much. He does not reveal that he suffers from blackouts. He then remembers what really happened when he broke into Mickelson's house. Mickelson had caught him, and drunk, jeered at his notebook and his make-believe Beck. The boy had run away, creeped out. He tries telling this to his wife, but it doesn't make much sense. He stops talking about the blackouts to his wife to protect her. He takes solace in the fact that she and his family will always be there when he comes back.