1. Art Barbara is a painfully awkward teenager, underweight, acne-ridden and bent crooked by scoliosis. Worse, he has no extra credits to get him into college. So Art starts the Pallbearers’ Club, mourning for people with no one else to bury them, which introduces him to Mercy Brown. Mercy is into bands, local history and taking photos of the dead.

Decades later, Art writes his memoir to try and make sense of it all, because nothing about Mercy is simple. Their friendship twists and coils, captured in Polaroid snapshots and sweaty gigs and inexplicable flashes of the parasite lurking in a folded jacket at night.

Because Art is writing, but Mercy is reading. And she thinks Art’s novel - this isn’t a memoir - needs some work, and she’s more than happy to set the record straight. What if Art didn’t get everything right? Come on, Art, you can’t tell just one side of the story …