Zuri Luz Benitez wakes up in her Bushwick, Brooklyn, home and discovers that the neighbors across the street are moving in. She and her sisters have been watching for months as the formerly rundown property was transformed into a “mini-mansion.”

The Haitian-Dominican Benitez household is a flurry of activity. The oldest daughter, Janae, is coming home for the summer from her first year of college, and Mama is preparing a welcome back dinner. Zuri’s younger sisters, Marisol, Layla, and Kayla are helping Mama cook. Papi is still sleeping after working a night shift in the hospital cafeteria. But when Zuri announces that the new neighbors have arrived, the girls want to look; they’ve made bets on whether the new rich neighbors will be Black or white.

The new neighbors are a Black family with two teenage sons, “fine, black teenage boys” (4). They introduce themselves to the boys, Ainsley and Darius Darcy. While Ainsley is friendly, Darius is rude and uninterested: “He just stands there with his upper lip curled as if he’s smelling his own stank attitude” (9). After he hints that he’s not happy to have moved to Bushwick, Zuri decides she doesn’t like him: “I don’t appreciate anyone throwing shade at my neighborhood” (9).