Moss, the novel’s protagonist, is a sixteen-year-old gay Black teenager living in West Oakland. Six years prior to the events of the book, he witnessed his father’s murder by the police and remains highly traumatized by the memory. He is anxious frequently, has regular panic attacks, and has to employ various methods (such as running through a “Rolodex” of happy memories of his father) in order to escape the memory of the sound of the gun and the sight of blood. Even then, he is still regularly haunted by nightmares of the police attacking him or invading his room. He feels a great deal of shame about all of this, afraid that Javier will not like him once he learns how bad his trauma is and, on several occasions, wishing he was not “broken” (183).

Moss also feels a great deal of anger. However, at the beginning of this book, he treats this rage in a similar manner to the way he treats his anxiety and panic: as something inconvenient and troublesome, an intrusive and destructive force from which he wishes to be free.