Athena Liu chokes and dies during a drunken pancake-eating contest at her own apartment while June watches helplessly.

June leaves Athena's apartment before dawn, taking the manuscript of The Last Front and research notes from Athena's desk.

June presents The Last Front to her agent Brett as her own completed novel, committing fully to her theft.

Eden Press wins a bidding war to publish The Last Front, giving June her first major book deal.

June and editor Daniella rework The Last Front, cutting Chinese cultural specificity and softening the white characters' racism.

June visits Athena's mother and persuades her to keep Athena's private notebooks unread and out of Yale's archives.

Eden's marketing team convinces June to publish The Last Front under the racially ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Candice Lee is fired from Eden Press and blacklisted after June complains about her one-star Goodreads review.

June gives her first public reading of The Last Front at Politics and Prose and sees Athena's ghost sitting in the audience.

A Twitter account called @AthenaLiusGhost publicly accuses June of stealing The Last Front from Athena Liu.

June secretly records her meeting with Geoffrey Carlino and threatens to release it, forcing him to shut down his Twitter account.

June uses a stolen paragraph from Athena's private notes to write and publish the novella Mother Witch.

Multiple witnesses identify the opening paragraph of Mother Witch as Athena's publicly workshopped writing, sparking a devastating new plagiarism scandal.

June agrees to meet the person behind Athena's Instagram at the Exorcist Stairs and confesses her crimes aloud.

Candice Lee reveals herself as the account holder with June's recorded confession, and June attacks her before being kicked down the stairs.

June Hayward witnesses her friend Athena Liu die and quietly leaves with the manuscript of Athena's brilliant unfinished novel, The Last Front. She submits it to her agent as her own work, secures a major deal with Eden Press, and fundamentally alters the novel's cultural substance during editing. Despite early threats from a sensitivity reader advocate and a plagiarism-accusing Twitter campaign, June suppresses each challenge through manipulation and blackmail. After plagiarizing again for her novella Mother Witch, a far more damaging scandal erupts that she cannot bury. The story culminates at the Exorcist Stairs, where June's own confession is captured by the very person she helped destroy, and a violent confrontation leaves her hospitalized. Even then, June refuses accountability and begins scheming her next move.

The theft, rise, and fall of June Hayward.

June and Athena celebrate Athena's new Netflix deal over drinks at a Washington DC bar before returning to Athena's apartment.

In the weeks after Athena's death, June performs grief for followers on social media, basking in the sympathy she receives.

June attends Athena's funeral and privately fumes about the mascara stains Athena's sobbing mother leaves on her velvet blouse.

June clashes with Candice Lee, an editorial assistant who insists Eden Press hire a sensitivity reader for The Last Front.

The Last Front hits the New York Times Bestseller list and stays there for weeks, making June a commercial success.

June attends BookCon, befriends fellow Eden Press authors who form the Eden's Angels group, and savors snubbing her former neglectful editor Garrett.

June meets with young mentee Emmy Cho and is caught off guard when Emmy directly asks if June is white.

June becomes consumed by online reviews labeling The Last Front as racist historical exploitation and a white savior story.

June meets with Greenhouse Productions producers who want to remove Chinese dialogue and expand white character roles in the film adaptation.

At a literary festival panel, fellow panelist Diana Qiu publicly accuses June of stealing The Last Front from Athena Liu.

June asks her brother-in-law Tom, an IT technician, to help track the IP address behind the @AthenaLiusGhost Twitter account.

June learns that right-wing readers are buying her books to oppose cancel culture, convincing Eden Press to retain her despite the scandal.

June teaches at a Young AAPI Writers' Workshop but retaliates against her students by publicly humiliating a girl named Skylar.

June visits her mother in Philadelphia, where her mother dismisses her writing career and urges her to find stable salaried work.

Candice Lee publishes an article in the New York Times revealing June's confession, plunging June into a deep depression.

Before Athena's death, the two friends celebrate a new deal in a DC bar, setting the stage for everything that follows. In the aftermath, June exploits Athena's death on social media and attends the funeral focused on her own inconvenience rather than grief. As The Last Front becomes a bestseller, June navigates a compliant marketing team, new literary allies, and eager Hollywood producers, suppressing the concerns of anyone who challenges her. A steady stream of online criticism and public confrontations widens the gap between June's self-image and how others see her. When a second plagiarism scandal strips away her remaining credibility and allies, June's carefully built world collapses, and Candice's published account finally brings June's crimes into the open.

The publishing machine behind June's stolen success.

June reads Athena's unfinished manuscript for the first time and privately recognizes it as extraordinary, culturally significant work.

After weeks of working on The Last Front, June decides it is her destiny to publish it rather than keep it as a private exercise.

June's existing publisher declines The Last Front without reading it, but nearly every major publishing house bids for the book.

Publication day arrives and June receives champagne, major newspaper reviews, and an overwhelming sense of the success she always believed she deserved.

June meets a man whose uncle served in the Chinese Labour Corps and feels genuine guilt for stealing Athena's work for the first time.

June panics upon realizing the entire Chinese American Social Club audience believed she was Chinese American and flees the event.

June creates a fake website to trap @AthenaLiusGhost and has Tom trace the IP address to Athena's ex-boyfriend Geoffrey Carlino.

June recalls that during college Athena published a short story at Yale based directly on June's private account of her sexual assault.

June admits she stole not only Athena's manuscript but also loose notes left on Athena's desk the night of her death.

After Eden's Angels go silent and peers abandon her, June deactivates all her social media accounts in shame.

While visiting her mother in Philadelphia, June discovers her old high school writing notebooks and reconnects with the joy writing once gave her.

June reads a review wishing for a true account of The Last Front's authorship and commits to writing a pseudo-autobiographical tell-all.

Athena's verified Instagram account suddenly reactivates and posts a photoshopped image featuring The Last Front that seems visible only to June.

June chases a figure she believes is Athena's ghost through the streets but discovers it is panelist Diana Qiu.

June wakes in the hospital and, after Candice announces a tell-all book deal, immediately begins scheming to publish a counter narrative.

June's theft begins the moment she privately recognizes the extraordinary power of Athena's manuscript, transforming what she tells herself is a writing exercise into a calculated act of plagiarism. Her triumph feels complete on publication day, but genuine guilt surfaces for the first time when she meets real people whose history Athena worked hard to honor. A critical turning point arrives when June admits she stole not only the manuscript but also Athena's private notes, and uses them again for Mother Witch, revealing the full depth of her crimes. As scandals accumulate and allies vanish, June turns inward, rediscovering the old notebooks that remind her of writing's lost joy and finding fresh inspiration for a dangerous new project. When Athena's Instagram reactivates and June begins hallucinating her ghost, the psychological cost of her crimes becomes impossible to contain. The novel ends not with redemption but with June's cold determination to spin yet another self-serving narrative.