One of Us is Lying: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

On a Monday in late September, Bronwyn Rojas scrolls through About That, the gossip app featuring all the rumors and drama swirling through her Southern California school, Bayview High. Simon Kelleher, the creator of the app, comes up behind her at her locker and tells her to just wait until she sees tomorrow’s post. Bronwyn, embarrassed to be caught on About That—especially by Simon of all people—closes her locker and walks down the hall, dismissively asking Simon whose life he’s planning on ruining next. Simon follows her, explaining that his app is a “public service,” and that the students featured on it “bring it on themselves” by lying and cheating in the first place.

Bronwyn’s phone flashes an alert, reminding her that she has Mathlete practice at a local coffee shop. Bronwyn isn’t going to make the meeting, though—today, she has detention. Simon does, too, and is shocked to learn that he and Bronwyn are heading down the hall towards the same destination—Mr. Avery’s third-floor lab. Bronwyn insists she’s been “wrongfully accused” of whatever she did as she storms into the lab, where three other students are already seated.

Nate Macauley, a drug dealer and troublemaker, taunts Bronwyn for getting detention. Cooper Clay, a jock, tosses a piece of paper his friend, a popular girl named Addy Prentiss. Bronwyn is devastated that she’s stuck in detention—she wants to be at Mathletes so she can flirt with the team’s newest recruit. She tries to plead her case to Mr. Avery, insisting that the phone he found in her backpack earlier wasn’t hers. To prove it, she holds up her own phone. Bronwyn knows any student would have to be “clueless” to have a cell phone in their bag during Mr. Avery’s lab—he requires students to leave their phones in their lockers during his class, and spends the first several minutes of every session checking bags. This afternoon, Bronwyn’s phone was in her locker, and Avery found a dummy phone in her bag.

Addy turns around, shocked; a dummy phone was in her bag, too. Cooper speaks up to say that the same thing happened to him. Simon laments that someone has “punked” them all, and wonders why someone would want to trap a group of students with overwhelmingly clean school records in detention. Simon speculates that Nate rigged detention so that he could have some company, but Bronwyn thinks Nate is too lazy for such a scheme.

Mr. Avery tells the students he doesn’t believe them and begins outlining their assignment. For the next hour, until 4:00 P.M., they’ll each be tasked with writing a 500-word essay on how technology is ruining American high schools—by hand. Whoever doesn’t complete their essay will have to return for detention again tomorrow. Bronwyn begs Mr. Avery to reconsider, as they’ve all clearly been the victims of a prank, but Avery just confiscates Bronwyn’s real phone and sits down at his desk.

The narrative switches to Cooper’s perspective. His hand cramps as he writes his essay—he can’t remember the last time he wrote something by hand. Plus, he’s using his right hand—though his left hand is the dominant one, his father urged him to learn how to develop strength in his right hand as well so that he didn’t waste his left arm (his pitching arm) on “crap that don’t matter.” Cooper has struggled for years with the pressure his father has put on him to become a great baseball star.

Simon reaches for his backpack and digs around inside, complaining that he can’t find his water bottle. Mr. Avery points towards the sink at the back of the room and tells Simon to quietly get a drink from there. Simon takes a cup from a stack on the counter, fills it, and heads back to his seat with it. Once he’s back, he asks Nate if he has rigged detention. Mr. Avery shushes the boys before they can argue—at that moment, there is the sound of a car crash out of one of the windows in the school parking lot. Nate gets up and goes over to one of the windows, remarking that there are never any accidents in the lot.

Bronwyn, Addy, and Cooper go over to the window as well. After a moment, Simon joins them. They all stare outside: two cars, a red one and a gray one, have collided at a right angle. Mr. Avery goes outside to make sure no one has been hurt, leaving Bronwyn in charge. Simon heads back to his desk, picks up his water glass, and leans out into the hallway, watching Mr. Avery leave. Simon points out that each student in detention today is a “teen-movie stereotype.” Cooper is the jock, Addy is the princess, Bronwyn is the brain, Nate is the criminal, and Simon is the “omniscient narrator.” Cooper thinks of Simon’s widely-hated gossip app, and wishes Simon wouldn’t publish the cruel rumors that already make the hallways of their high school hard enough. Cooper admits that he’s “pretty freaked” by the idea of what Simon could write about him.

Simon takes a drink of water and then frowns, saying the water tastes like crap. Cooper thinks Simon is being dramatic—but then Simon drops his cup and falls to the floor, wheezing. Bronwyn and Nate immediately rush over to Simon, and Nate realizes that Simon needs an epi-pen. Bronwyn gets up to find a teacher and call 9-1-1, grabbing her phone from Mr. Avery’s desk and running into the hall. Cooper kneels next to Simon, whose lips are already turning blue. Nate rifles through Simon’s bag, looking for his epi-pen, but can’t find it.

Mr. Avery, Bronwyn, and two other teachers rush into the room, and Mr. Avery sends Cooper down the hall to the nurse’s office to look for an epi-pen. Cooper runs to the office—it’s empty. He quickly sees a wall-mounted box labeled EMERGENCY EPHINEPHRINE, and pulls the cabinet open. There is nothing inside of it. He rifles through a storage cabinet, but can’t find anything resembling a pen. Ms. Grayson, one of the teachers, enters the nurse’s office and helps him check the supply cabinet. Another teacher joins them, and after a minute Ms. Grayson sends Cooper back to Mr. Avery’s room. She asks him to tell the others that she and the other teacher are going to keep looking.

Cooper rushes back to Mr. Avery’s room and finds that the paramedics have arrived. Three of them bring a stretcher into the room; one of the paramedics stabs Simon with a syringe while the other two lift him up onto the stretcher. Addy is standing in a corner of the room, crying. Cooper goes over to her and comforts her. The paramedics ask Mr. Avery to accompany them out of the room; he does, leaving the four students shell-shocked. Addy asks if Simon is going to be okay; Nate admits that he doesn’t think he will be.