Claudia returns home from a summer away and realizes Monday has not answered any of her letters over the months.

Monday fails to appear on the first day of eighth grade and is not even on the class roster.

When Claudia visits Monday's house alone, Mrs. Charles screams at her and nearly strikes her before ordering her to leave.

Mrs. Valente takes Claudia to the school office and discovers Monday and her siblings are not registered for the year.

Claudia spots April Charles at a supermarket wearing the jacket Claudia lent Monday, and April claims Monday is staying with an aunt.

Claudia and her mother visit Mrs. Charles, who insists Monday is with her father and makes cruel remarks before shutting the door.

Claudia's parents meet with school staff and learn Claudia has been hiding undiagnosed dyslexia behind Monday's academic help.

Claudia goes to the police to report Monday missing, but an officer dismisses her concern and turns her away.

Mrs. Valente finally visits the Charles house, finds disturbing conditions, and files a report with Child and Family Services.

April leads Claudia inside the Charles house for the first time, where a foul-smelling freezer and Monday's hidden journal are found.

Claudia hides under Monday's bed for hours while Mrs. Charles is home, then escapes through a bathroom window.

Police arrive at the Charles house and discover the frozen bodies of Monday and her brother August inside a large freezer.

Claudia's mother reveals that Monday died two years ago and that Claudia has been reliving the past through dissociation.

Claudia's mother confesses she drove Monday home after summer began, called CFSA anonymously, and believes this triggered Mrs. Charles.

Claudia performs her first dance solo at the recital and feels Monday's presence dancing alongside her throughout the performance.

Claudia Coleman returns home after a summer away to find her best friend Monday Charles has vanished without a trace. As Claudia desperately investigates, the adults around her dismiss her concerns, forcing her to confront institutions that fail Black girls. Gradually, she uncovers the disturbing truth about Monday's home life and the horrifying conditions inside the Charles house. Her search culminates in the discovery of Monday's and August's frozen bodies — a truth so traumatic that Claudia's mind shuts it out entirely. Years later, Claudia's mother helps shatter her daughter's dissociative state by revealing that Monday has been gone all along. Even as Claudia grieves, she finds a path forward through dance, eventually feeling her friend beside her at her first solo recital.

Claudia begins writing letters to Monday in the journal Monday gifted her, despite hating writing.

Monday and Claudia use their secret language to communicate about a group of older boys at a Chinese restaurant.

At a neighborhood block party, Monday reacts with extreme, disproportionate terror when Mrs. Charles snaps at her hand.

Claudia is moved into an advanced jazz dance class with high school girls and impresses everyone at her first rehearsal.

The school librarian reveals that Monday repeatedly checked out the same book, Flowers in the Attic, before disappearing.

Claudia's mother agrees to take Claudia to Monday's house in exchange for Claudia joining the church's teen ministry group.

After Jacob publicly slut-shames Monday, Monday attacks him violently in the school hallway until a teacher intervenes.

Monday returns to school the day after her suspension unwashed, in urine-soaked clothes, and in a deeply dissociated state.

At the school nurse's office, Claudia gives Monday's name and discovers a thick file documenting Monday's repeated bruise-related visits.

A photo of Claudia comforting Monday in a school bathroom stall circulates on social media as a false sexual claim.

Claudia attends a high school basketball game with Michael and spots April in the bleachers wearing Monday's old sweater.

April corners Claudia at a house party and shouts that Monday is never coming back and will never return.

Monday and August's joint funeral draws hundreds of strangers while the classmates who bullied Monday grieve as if they were close friends.

April tells Claudia she placed Monday's body into the freezer herself, uncertain whether Monday was already dead when she did it.

Claudia and Michael drive to Monday's boarded-up former home so Claudia can seek closure at the site of her friend's death.

From quiet moments of girlhood to violent turning points, this pool traces the texture of Monday's and Claudia's world before and after Monday's disappearance. The girls shared a vibrant bond built on secret languages, dance routines, and mutual protection, but warning signs about Monday's home life were always visible to those willing to look. When Monday's explosive confrontation with Jacob leads to suspension and public humiliation, the cracks in her world become impossible to ignore. As Claudia searches for answers, she builds new friendships and pushes herself in dance, even as the people around her seem to know something she does not. Shocking revelations at a party and inside the Charles house eventually push Claudia toward the truth. By the novel's end, a funeral, a confession, and a final visit to the old neighborhood help Claudia begin to accept what she has lost.

The friendships, fights, and failures that shaped Monday's story

Claudia overhears a neighbor mention that Mrs. Charles has been visiting the local drug dealer's house throughout the summer.

Claudia notices Monday's back is covered in deep purple bruises, which Monday dismisses as an injury from a bunk bed.

Monday reveals she snuck out of her house overnight to see Jacob, escaping regularly through a bathroom window onto trash cans.

After Christmas break, Monday returns to school in a zombie-like dissociated state while her brother August never comes back at all.

While Claudia comforts a sobbing Monday in a school bathroom stall, a bright camera flash goes off from an unseen source.

Claudia and her father encounter April and little Tuesday at a restaurant, and Tuesday says Monday mostly plays inside a closet.

The retired school nurse tells Claudia over the phone that Monday's prolonged absences from school were never caused by illness.

April reveals to Claudia that Monday was sexually involved with someone other than Jacob, then shows a burn scar on her own arm.

Claudia's father learns by chance that Monday's father Tip has not seen any of his children in over a year.

Claudia reads Monday's journal and finds entries where Monday expressed deep frustration at carrying Claudia's unaddressed academic struggles.

Michael tells Claudia the plot of Flowers in the Attic, and Claudia realizes Monday's repeated checkouts were a desperate cry for help.

Monday's father Tip spots Claudia waiting at his workplace and immediately drives away without speaking to her.

Claudia's father gives her a cell phone so she can finally read old news reports now that she remembers Monday has died.

Michael reveals he was the last person to see Monday alive, having mistaken her for Claudia on that final day.

A podcast plays Mrs. Charles's confession, in which she describes beating Monday, locking her in a closet, and leaving her to die.

This pool collects the overlooked clues, quiet discoveries, and devastating revelations that explain how Monday's suffering went undetected for so long. From early signs of Mrs. Charles's instability to Monday's bruises and her compulsive rereading of stories about abused children, the evidence was always present for those willing to look. Key moments of discovery — a camera flash in a bathroom, a little girl's innocent word about a closet, a retired nurse's troubled warning — each add a piece to the puzzle Claudia assembles too late. As the truth finally surfaces, the people in Claudia's life reveal what they knew and when, from Monday's absent father to Michael's haunting last glimpse of her. Mrs. Charles's own unapologetic confession closes the loop on what truly happened inside the Charles house. Together, these turning points reveal how systemic indifference and guarded secrets allowed a tragedy to unfold in plain sight.

Tiffany D. Jackson

Novel

Fiction

Guide