- Welcome to Baileywell Preparatory Academy, otherwise known as Bullywell or Bullyville (or Bullyreallywell). Anyway, it is a fancy private school where people get bullied. Good times.
- Baileywell is a Medieval Times-style fake castle. No dinner theater here, though, just misery.
- The school is in Hillbrook, New Jersey, a town fondly referred to as Hellbrook. Though it's polluted, a lot of fancy people live there.
- In case you haven't noticed, everyone and everything in this book has a nickname. The narrator shares the nicknames of, like, ten more things, including students (Pork, Dog, Buff), places (Break-knuckles Hall), and the headmaster (Dr. Bratwurst).
- There is an urban legend about a bullied kid who died in Break-knuckles Hall. In fact, there are all sorts of sad, scary, and ridiculous stories surrounding Baileywell; it has a bit of a reputation.
- Some of these other legends include victims of bullying, like a boy who was supposedly drowned in his soup only to have his eyeballs turn up later in a teacher's soup. Sounds legit.
- Our narrator tells us that what happened to him was even worse than that, though, which makes us think he might be a teensy bit melodramatic.
- Up until seventh grade, our narrator went to public school in Hillbrook. No one was drowned in their soup there, and the narrator looks back on this time with nostalgia.
- Baileywell is so notorious that our narrator's public school teachers used it as a sort of threat when students were bad. Yikes.
- Hillbrook was once a boring town where nothing ever happened there; the narrator thinks this why people talked about Baileywell so much.
- But then, all at once, everything happened. We're not sure exactly this means, but we can tell it was awful. The narrator calls it the "Big Everything."
- The Big Everything changed the narrator's life. It plucked him out of his normal life and dropped him into a life of hardship at Medieval Times, er, we mean Baileywell.
- The narrator started his eighth grade year at Hillbrook Middle School, and a week or so after school opens, the narrator wakes up with the flu. He's a little bummed to have to stay home sick so early in the school year.
- Also bummed? His mom, who is going to have to miss work since she can't find a babysitter.
- The narrator tells us his father hasn't been at home for the last six months since he left the family for his young mistress, Caroline.
- Caroline works in the same office as the narrator's mom and dad. Whoa. Way to take the drama to soap opera levels.
- BTW, the narrator and his mom didn't tell anyone in their family about the whole Caroline thing, so it's a huge secret that his dad isn't living at home anymore.
- In fact, the whole "abandonment" thing is not something the narrator and his mom talk about, even with each other.
- The narrator has been having some pretty strained phone conversations with his dad, and they haven't been hanging out much.
- While the narrator has been ignoring his dad's texts, he has tried to call him at the office. He wants to confront his father about the whole Caroline thing, but he always goes to voicemail and finds himself unable to leave a message.
- The narrator's mom skips work to take care of her sick son. That morning, the phone rings. And then it keeps ringing…