The novel has several different narrators and is roughly chronological through the four seasons, though certain characters reflect back on earlier times in their lives. What binds the characters together is that they all live in the same neighborhood of Scarborough, and most of the children attend Rouge Hill Public School and visit the Ontario Reads Literacy Centre. Some characters are friends and their lives intersect, while others are only peripherally related.
The three main characters are Bing, Sylvie, Laura, with others such as Hina, Edna, Marie, Victor, and Cory acting as important secondary characters (and even more are tertiary characters).
Bing, a young Filipino boy, lives with his mother, Edna, after fleeing from his father, Edna's husband, after his mental illness made him a threat. Edna is a nail technician trying to make ends meet to support her son. She is a loving mother and accepts Bing in all regards, knowing that he is gay and femme and never judging him for it. At the beginning of the story, Bing learns he may be tested for giftedness and get to move schools, which comes to fruition by the end of the novel. He endures several instances of bullying due to his weight, but he comes to accept himself more after he performs a song at the school concert, wearing a sparkling pink halter top and giving in to his true self.
Sylvie and Bing are best friends. She is a young Native girl who lives in community housing with her mother, Marie, her father, who has suffered a recent injury after crashing his big rig, and her brother, Johnny, who has an undiagnosed developmental disability. Sylvie is tenacious and clever, and she sticks up for her friends. Her mother works as hard as she can to take care of her children even though they are very poor and her husband’s gambling addiction has been a burden. She tries to get Johnny a diagnosis of autism so he can be connected to resources to help him, which she finally achieves by the end of the novel with help from Hina. Though she experiences great frustration with parenting a child as difficult as Johnny, she does not give up and he is able to communicate better.
Laura is a shy young White girl who was initially living with her drug addict mother, Jessica, but comes to stay with her father, Cory, after Jessica decides she cannot handle parenting anymore. Laura is sorely neglected, and even though the hotheaded Cory tries to do right by her, he is not a good parent either. Their relationship has highs and lows and Laura seems to only feel comfortable at school, where Hina indefatigably tries to connect with her and show her love. Laura and her father die in an apartment father, but the text suggests they find peace together in the afterlife.
Other, smaller narratives frame and/or supplement these three central narratives; examples include the apartment fire on Christmas Eve and how various characters are connected to it, and Hina’s employment at the center and her difficulties with her first supervisor even as she excels at connecting with the community.
