Luke can't sleep. And even when he's awake, everything is a haze; he can't engage. The senior exams are approaching, and he hasn't finished the writing folder for Ms. Brennan. Worse yet, his mother doesn't understand what's wrong and his sister Molly has begun to hate him. And Luke's dad, well, he hasn't spoken to Luke in months. Mrs. Lewis is right: Luke is in the top intelligence bracket of the population--he should be sailing through school.
As Luke slowly and unwillingly disengages from everyone he loves, he has one consolation: if he can prove to himself that the train that he alone hears at night is real--that the night train exists--then maybe his problems are not all in his head.