Shay is a teenager in Brooklyn who is packing up her childhood home to move to Wilmington, North Carolina. She aspires to become a marine biologist, finding beauty in unseen underwater ecosystems. Though she shares a deep bond with Dante, she approaches her family's forced relocation with a degree of acceptance and looks forward to living near the ocean.

Dante is Shay's teenage boyfriend and childhood best friend, deeply rooted in their Brooklyn neighborhood. He struggles to accept that Shay is moving away and insists on receiving an eraser tattoo of her initial so she leaves a permanent physical mark on him. He covers his sadness with jokes about building a bridge to North Carolina to keep them connected.

The new tenants are a young, affluent white couple moving into Shay's childhood home. They arrive to move their belongings in before Shay's family has completely vacated the premises. They represent the incoming wave of gentrification transforming the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Shay's mother is a Brooklyn resident being forced out of the apartment where she has lived and raised her daughter for twenty years. She feels a profound attachment to the physical space, mourning the loss of the home, the memories tied to it, and the plants she must leave behind.

Shay's father is the head of a family being forced to relocate from Brooklyn to Wilmington. He drives ahead of the rest of the family to manage the move, leaving an empty parking spot that is immediately taken by the new residents. He is strict about his daughter's appearance, specifically forbidding her from getting tattoos.