Shatter Me

The novel opens with the narrator, Juliette, receiving the news that from now on she will have a cellmate. She has been kept in an asylum for 264 days, and she hasn't spoken to anyone since she got there. Juliette is kept in the asylum by the minions of The Reestablishment, a political group who under the pretense of helping the society took her away from her parents' house and locked her up. She is there because of “something outside [her] control” (1), for doing something she did not know she was capable of.

Juliette does not know where she is, but she knows that it took them 6 hours and 37 minutes to get there. She is also aware that her parents never said goodbye to her, and she wasn't crying when she was being taken away. Juliette has been alone for so long that she needs to practice how to speak before her cellmate arrives. As she waits for her visitor, she falls asleep, and when she awakes, she is startled to see that her cellmate is a boy. Shocked and terrified, Juliette jumps off the bed and hides in the corner.

Juliette cannot believe that she was locked with a boy and tries to avoid him at all costs.