During summer break one day, Angie, the teenage daughter of Indian immigrant Babur Singh, is walking home after swimming at the high school pool when she finds Henry McCleary, a white classmate from a wealthy family, stabbed and bleeding on the football field. The police immediately focus their investigation on Chiara Thompkins, a runaway Black girl who disappears after the stabbing and --- it’s later discovered --- wasn’t properly enrolled in the public high school. The incident sends shock waves through the community and reveals jarring truths about the lengths to which families will go to protect themselves.