Chapter 1 frames the dual, parallel narratives that follow. The narrator introduces himself in the first person with the opening line, “You may remember me” (1). He does not reveal his name, Mike (or, later, Michael), until the last sentence of the chapter. He references his unusual celebrity, vaguely alluding to a horrific trauma that he survived in June of 1990, when he was a young boy in Michigan. He notes that newspapers nicknamed him “Miracle Boy” (1). The reader discovers that Mike is writing this account from prison, where for the past nine years he has been “locked up”—an echo of the novel’s title and Mike’s former criminal vocation as a lock picker.

Mike has not “spoken one single word out loud” (2) since his childhood trauma occurred. Since he cannot speak, he has decided to write the memoir that follows—a recollection of his childhood since the trauma and the events leading to his incarceration. He says he is not ready to recount the traumatic event itself, since it is too painful, and he “can’t go there yet” (3). That incident wounded him so profoundly that “Some days it’s all I can do to keep breathing” (3).