As Brooke, Jaynah, Piper and Peyton are hitting the road for their post-graduation senior trip to King's Island, they are struck by an oncoming car and everyone is consumed in the horrific, fiery crash -Piper alone survives. She is haunted by the fact that not only did she survive, but she was found several yards from the crash, standing at the curb watching, not a scratch on her. The question that plagues her is:  how?

Determined to put the grave loss behind her, she continues with her plans -her father's dream, really- and leaves her home in Shelbyville to attend Indiana University at Bloomington.

While in the stacks of the library where she works every Friday and Saturday to avoid the partying that is ubiquitous to college life, she meets Gabriel Salvador, and wants nothing to do with love, dating, or friendship, fearing the loss of anymore loved ones. Gabriel is persistent, however, and eventually wears her down.

As everything in the world seems right again, Piper suddenly becomes victim to continuous thoughts of worthlessness, suicide, and terrible guilt at surviving her friends and brother, and the return of the question: "How DID I survive?"

With the answer to this, she understands the origin of the self-depricating voice, and she discovers who her enemy is. But can she survive again and defeat her foe?