The protagonist, seventh-grader Calliope Snow, who calls herself Calli June, wakes up on a Saturday morning to find that all her clothes have been packed away. When she asks her mom about it, her mom doesn’t answer. Calli takes this to mean that she and her mother will be moving again today.

When Calli finds her mom, she’s piling socks into moving boxes. She tells Calli to pack the kitchen rags, and Calli obeys silently. Calli notes that she won’t have time to say goodbye to her teachers, and she hides away to begin pulling at her hair as a response.

Though Calli’s hair is “the only thing / [she’s] ever liked about [herself]” (5), she still twists it around her fingers and pulls it out as a nervous habit. Her mom has threatened in the past that if she catches Calli pulling her hair out again, she’ll cut it off. Rather than stop pulling, Calli hides her habit as best as she can.