Sam makes his way across the country. He tells his backstory to a truck driver. Sam's father beat him regularly, his mother ignored his accomplishments, and the jocks in the school tormented him. Sam also recalls that Duncan Locke tried very hard to help Sam with college applications, and he remembers Tyler being so mad at his father that Tyler says offhandedly that if Sam ever kills his own dad that he should kill Tyler's dad too. In Lovecraft, Tyler struggles with having to maintain a macho outer image for Bode and his true feelings of overwhelming grief.