Midnight is trapped in the web of poverty that Ruth managed to escape. Yet he's white and she believes he will always benefit from that privilege in spite of his unstable home life. Is that true? Will his whiteness supersede his economic disadvantage? Corey is raised in a middle class, two-parent household, but he's still Black. What will his future look like? How do these dynamics impact the trajectory of these characters' lives and how they view each other over the course of the novel?