After

A shooting at Pleasant Valley High School, fifty miles away, disrupts life at Central High. Three students at Pleasant Valley killed five classmates and three teachers, targeting athletes, before killing themselves. The narrator, Tom Bishop, is a sophomore and member of a four-person clique known as the Smart Jocks. His closest friends are Brian, the group's most popular member; Avery, the only Black student on the basketball team, who argues with a lawyer's precision; and Silas, a habitual marijuana user given to conspiracy theories. Tom's mother died in a car accident four years earlier, and he lives with his father, an illustrator who is dating a woman named Clara.

Within days, Central High hires Dr. Henry Willner, a former professor of clinical psychology introduced as a grief and crisis counselor. At an all-school assembly, Dr. Willner declares that the school has entered "a new era" and announces a Zero Tolerance policy for drugs and weapons. Their social studies teacher, Mrs. Ridley, once known for encouraging open discussion, now refuses to let students question the new policies. Tom finds her changed demeanor unsettling, reminiscent of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The changes accelerate. Metal detectors and backpack-searching guards appear at every entrance. Dr. Willner imposes a strict dress code, banning items including trench coats, chains, and the color red, citing its use by the Pleasant Valley killers. Stephanie Tyrone, an eleventh grader who wears a red AIDS ribbon daily in memory of her brother, is suspended and never returns. After guards find a joint Silas discarded outside the school, Dr. Willner mandates random urine drug testing for all extracurricular activities. Tom, the only Smart Jock who does not use marijuana, volunteers for the first test to shield Silas.

Random locker searches follow. Tom is summoned to Dr. Willner's office, where two items from his locker are deemed dangerous: a copy of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, removed from the curriculum as a negative influence, and a CD by the hip-hop group Tuff Knox, which appears on a banned-music list. Dr. Willner pressures Tom to remove both voluntarily. During the meeting, Tom recognizes a deep, impersonal hostility in Dr. Willner directed at him simply for being young. In Mrs. Ridley's class, Becca Sawyer, a classmate of Tom's, writes a paragraph calling the school a police state, and Mrs. Ridley quietly tells her to take the paper home and destroy it.

Televisions are installed on the school buses, playing a propagandistic series called "Great Moments in History" that eliminates conversation. The school also sends nightly e-mails to parents filled with alarming statistics about school violence. Tom's father, whose fear of losing Tom has been intensified by his wife's death, admits these e-mails make him reluctant to challenge the administration, but he firmly tells Tom never to inform on friends. Days later, when Becca's cell phone rings during class, Mrs. Ridley decides to cover for her, making the class promise silence. The next morning, Mrs. Ridley is gone. Someone in the class reported her.

When the drug tests are truly randomized, Silas is selected and fails. Dr. Willner and Silas's parents send him to Operation Turnaround, a punitive wilderness program in Arizona with no unsupervised outside contact. Tom, Brian, and Avery visit Silas before he leaves and find him under house arrest, barely able to speak. Silas insists that students are disappearing from schools nationwide and that websites documenting the phenomenon keep getting shut down. He urges his friends to research Stalin's rise to power and gestures frantically at his Invasion of the Body Snatchers tape and then at his mother, implying she has been taken over. His mother, smiling oddly, dismisses his fears as drug-induced paranoia.

After Christmas, Dr. Willner summons the three remaining Smart Jocks and orders them to let Pleasant Valley win an upcoming basketball game, framing it as therapy for the traumatized replacement players. He warns of severe consequences if they disobey. Brian reasons that Dr. Willner's only real motive is to demonstrate power, and Avery agrees. They decide to play normally without forcing the outcome.

On the morning of the game, Dr. Willner announces that the principal, Mr. Trent, has taken early retirement, effective immediately, and that Dr. Willner will serve as acting principal. He then reveals that Stephanie Tyrone has been "fatally injured in an accident while trying to escape" from Operation Turnaround. Tom is certain she was killed and understands the announcement is timed to intimidate them. Coach Petrocelli starts Tom, Brian, and Avery instead of the usual lineup, suggesting he too has been pressured. Brian devises a strategy to keep the score close without deliberately losing. The plan holds until the final seconds, when Tom is fouled and sent to the free-throw line with Central trailing by one. He makes the tying shot, then faces the decisive second attempt. Unable to bring himself to lose on purpose, he makes the shot. Central wins.

After the game, Becca meets Tom and they walk to her house. They discuss the school's transformation and Becca's theory that the nightly e-mails are brainwashing parents. Tom opens up about missing his mother and kisses Becca for the first time.

The next morning, Avery reports what the Pleasant Valley point guard revealed to him after the game: dozens of students have disappeared from Pleasant Valley; Operation Turnaround is a nationwide network of detention camps; students who resist are killed and their deaths reported as escape attempts; Pleasant Valley has been nearly emptied of students. That same day, Avery is called to Dr. Willner's office, where edited bus surveillance footage makes him appear to be voicing paranoid theories. His parents, whom Avery believes have been brainwashed by the e-mails, agree to send him to an intervention program. Neighbors later see a police car come for Avery. He does not return.

Mysterious graffiti begins appearing at school: "WHERE IS SILAS?" in orange, "WHERE IS AVERY?" in purple, "WHERE IS STEPHANIE?" in red. Dr. Willner imposes a curfew and bans students from the mall, but no one informs on the writer. Tom discovers that Becca is responsible when she leads him through her garage, where open paint cans match the graffiti colors. She has one final message to paint, asking about Jerry Gargiulo, another student sent to Operation Turnaround, and about Mrs. Ridley. Tom agrees to be her lookout. That night, they sneak into the school, but Dr. Willner appears, having been lying in wait. They flee.

The next morning, Tom takes his father and Clara to breakfast and tells them everything. They believe him. Clara calls Pleasant Valley High School and finds the number disconnected. They drive to Pleasant Valley, where the school sits deserted, with open books on desks and backpacks in aisles, evidence that students were removed suddenly during a normal school day. While they stand outside, Tom's father's cell phone rings. It is Dr. Willner, demanding a meeting to discuss the family's "inappropriate interest in Pleasant Valley." Tom's father refuses.

Back home, Tom's father proposes a "vacation," though everyone understands they are leaving for good. They withdraw the maximum cash from their accounts, and Tom packs clothes, his grandfather's stamp collection, photographs of his mother, and a book she once read to him. They pick up Brian, who packs in minutes and leaves no note, his eyes filling with tears. At Becca's house, her mother grasps the situation immediately and insists on joining them, saying Becca's father will catch up later. The group loads into Clara's minivan and heads west. As the others sleep, Clara reaches behind her seat and squeezes Tom's hand, a gesture his mother used to make. He squeezes back. No one knows their destination. They are looking for somewhere peaceful, "somewhere where no one had ever heard about Pleasant Valley, or about what happened after" (330).