Bryan, the novel’s first-person narrator, is “chilling” at the community center where his mother, a social worker, has her office. Bryan often comes to her office after school to do his homework, and his mother and her colleagues have allowed him to set up a “pretend-office” of his own with a spare chair. Sometimes his sister Ava, who is three years older, joins him and helps him with his homework. His mother often helps neighbors and their children as part of her work, but today Bryan is distracted by a boy whom he has seen in the office several times lately. The boy’s name is Mike, and as a seventh-grader at Bryan’s middle school, he is about a year older than Bryan. Bryan’s mother tells him that Mike’s family recently relocated from the Bronx to Brooklyn, and she has helped his family to get an apartment in the same projects where they live. Like Bryan, he is African American.

Bryan observes with annoyance that both his parents have become close to Mike, who even hugs his mother and calls her “Ma.” Ava teases him that it is probably because Mike is her “real son,” unlike Bryan.