Anaïs carries the weight of the world on her 12-year-old shoulders. Her body is both a temple of pain and a fortress. Hunched in defense or plain ignored, she observes. It is summer. The beach. Family vacation. Summer romance. Initiation, therefore, and first love. Immured in the chrysalis of her weight, Anaïs undergoes this rite of passage by proxy, observing her beloved (and hated) older sister, her chimerical alter ego, her imago. Eléna is 15 and wickedly gorgeous. She is no more frivolous or dumb than her younger sister, but she can’t understand that she’s merely an object of lust and as such, all she can do is be taken. Or be had. In fact, that’s what it’s all about: girls losing their virginity. It doesn’t belong to them; it belongs to society, which keeps its terrible tally — and opens the door to drama, that summer.