You'll Be the Death of Me

Ivy Sterling-Shepard, a high school senior living in Carlton, Massachusetts, video chats with her mother and father, who are on vacation in San Francisco. Ivy’s mother Samantha, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), gives instructions for their return: As soon as they arrive, they will drive to an important award ceremony honoring Samantha’s research and advocacy against opioid addiction. Ivy wonders if Samantha regrets asking her to speak at the ceremony. Samantha senses that Ivy is anxious and attributes it to the class president election, which Ivy lost the day prior. Ivy begs her parents to let her skip the morning school assembly when the new class president will give his speech. She remembers the only other time she skipped class: In sixth grade, she snuck out of a field trip with two other students, Cal and Mateo, and wandered through Boston. Ivy’s father warns her brother, Daniel, not to mess with her speech for the ceremony. The previous year, Daniel had replaced part of Ivy’s talent show speech with excerpts from their aunt’s romance novels. Ivy promises her mother the ceremony will be perfect.