Moving to a hick southern town from DC for your senior year of high school to spend time with your crotchety dying grandmother when you're Black and queer--living the dream, right? Not so much. Still, Avery is interested in getting to know Mama Letty, despite the latter's resistance. She's kind of over her best friends in DC, including the one she used to date. She's lucky enough to find new besties: her scrumptious next door neighbor Simone, and Simone's perfect white homie Jade.

Secrets come out, fences get broken, tears are shed, and love gets mended. And sometimes justice isn't served and old wounds go unhealed.

"'Maybe they're not petty little things.'
"'It's been years since my mom left, Jade, years!'
"'Exactly. It's been years and whatever broke them is still bothering them. That means it must've been serious.'
"'Serious enough that Mama Letty is literally about to die and my mom still can't let it go?'
Jade shrugged. 'Trauma is a bitch who keeps on giving. It's hard to let go of something you haven't worked through. Some would argue it's impossible.'"

***

Perhaps you've observed, like I have, that Tarot is gaining on astrology in certain circles.

"She tented her fingers. 'I knew this would happen. My card tried to warn me.'
'Your card?'
'The Three of Swords,' she said, exasperated I wasn't keeping up. 'It represents heartbreak and hardship.'"

***

And here's some Zoomer realness:

"I learned active shooter drills the same time I learned my ABCs, every summer was the hottest on record. The pandemic paused a majority of my high school years, and I'd been convinced the only way to make it up was to go, go, go full steam ahead. And now this. It was Mama Letty's last days and there wasn't nearly enough time to make up everything I'd lost. Life was short. Everything was urgent and who had time to breathe in all that?"