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When Freshman Kymer Charvat indulges in recreational drugs with her new friends, an on-campus ghost hands her a mystery to solve.

While experimenting with substances in the university library, Kymer is confronted by a ghost from KU’s past: Carrie Watson, the librarian who is the library’s namesake. Carrie gives Kymer the insect field journal of Flora Ellen Richardson, the first woman to graduate from KU. When Kymer reviews the bug diary, she realizes there’s a bee in Flora’s journal that’s never before been identified by science. A wild ride ensues changing the world of entomology, and her personal world, forever.

Kymer becomes fast friends with her new dorm roommate, Siren, a bold and bosomed young woman with a complicated background, and her classmate, Mattie, an exuberant, gay Black man whose family owns a local restaurant and embraces Kymer and Siren like their own. Together, the trio experience college life at its fullest, which includes some harmless drinking and drug experimentation.

When another on-campus ghost, naturalist and professor Lewis Lynsey Dyche, gives Kymer a second clue to aid in her quest to identify the mystery bee in Flora’s bug diary, classifying the mystery bee becomes Kymer’s main drive.