Alex Gallagher moves into the Gallagher house at sixteen, the same age as Lip, not out of choice but because his life has finally collapsed beyond repair. His mother is killed in a sudden car accident, leaving him shaken and unmoored, and his father—Frank Gallagher’s brother—is arrested and sentenced to prison shortly afterward. With no other family willing to take responsibility for him, Alex is sent to live with the Gallaghers, a family he knows only in fragments and bad memories.