Robin, a young boy, prepares to go outside in winter with his pellet gun to look at a beaver dam. As he walks, he imagines a fictional species, the Nethers, which live in a rock wall. He uses his pellet gun to threaten them and occasionally shoots one in the butt. He imagines a complicated scenario where they tie him up, he escapes, then helps the injured ones. In other instances of imaginary play, they torture him, and Robin suspects they might soon kidnap his new classmate Suzanne Bledsoe. As he walks along a path in the woods, he imagines he is on his way to rescue her and that when he does, she will remember his name and invite him to come swimming in the summer. Robin laments about the imagined scenario that “The twerpy thing was, you never really got to save anyone” (219).

At the pond, still imagining he is tracking a Nether, Robin finds a coat recently left behind on a bench. At a distance, he sees a skinny man in pajamas; though Robin is worried the man might be dangerous, he decides the man needs rescuing and grabs the coat.

The point of view shifts to 10 minutes earlier as Don Eber pauses at the pond having internal monologues with his absentee father, his wife, and his children.