Florida, 1997. Mallory Thatcher is a girl marred by the trauma Florida, 1997. Accustomed to isolation, and from a family that lives in poverty, Mallory Thatcher is a shy young girl marred by extreme trauma by an older teenage boy, Elijah Campbell, who made her a victim of relentless bullying, and a haunting incident in her childhood that she can never erase from her mind, “attempted rape” in a swamp he had chased her down in. She yearns for normalcy. Living in isolation and in the shadow of this past, she creates "Cadence," an alter ego born from longing for protection and strength that her real-world guardians failed to provide. After the death of Mallory’s grandfather, and her family no longer able to afford living in the state of Florida, they move to the small town of Englander Falls, Mississippi where her grandmother is. She hopes for a fresh start, and to even find love for the first time like all the other teenage girls, but Mallory’s past has made her afraid to come in close contact with any other person that has tried to befriend her. When she finally opens up again, she is subject to more bullying by those she trusted. Her blackouts and night terrors worsen. Little do they know that beneath her quiet exterior, a dark hidden resilience lay dormant within her fragile psyche, diagnosed as a schizophrenic, ready to surface when pushed to the brink. Mallory finds herself entangled in a series of mysterious deaths that stir the town and eventually point to her as the prime suspect. With her beloved sister's murder weighing heavily on her, Mallory is forced to confront her darkest fears and the possibility that her past in Florida, and the murders are intertwined more deeply than she ever imagined. Although she is responsible for the other murders, she believes that someone has set her up for her sister’s murder. It becomes a twist in a tale of survival, a relentless journey through love, navigating through the search for identity, truth, and the fight to reclaim one's voice in the face of society.