Tuyen, Oku, and Carla are introduced riding a Toronto subway train together, joking about Oku's unrequited love for Jackie.

Quy narrates being accidentally separated from his fleeing family and boarding the wrong refugee boat as a small child.

Quy arrives at the Pulau Bidong refugee camp after eight days at sea, alone and unclaimed by any adult.

Binh visits Tuyen and announces he plans to fly to Thailand to search for their long-lost brother Quy.

Carla tells Tuyen her brother Jamal has been arrested again, this time on a serious carjacking charge.

Tuyen visits her parents' house and accidentally mentions Quy, causing her father Tuan to leave the room wounded.

Binh returns from his trip to Thailand having failed to locate Quy.

Oku drives to Jackie's clothing store and the two have sex in Reiner's bed while Reiner is away.

Korea defeats Italy in the World Cup, setting off jubilant street celebrations across Toronto's diverse neighborhoods.

While photographing the World Cup celebrations, Tuyen accidentally captures Binh in a tense conversation with an unrecognized man.

After developing her photographs late at night, Tuyen realizes the unrecognized man speaking with Binh is her brother Quy.

Carla confronts her father Derek, shatters her glass against his wall, and physically attacks him when he insults her mother.

Binh admits to Tuyen that he has successfully located Quy, who is now living in Toronto.

Tuyen, Binh, and Quy drive to the family home in Richmond Hill so Quy can finally meet his parents.

Jamal and a friend carjack Binh's BMW with Quy inside, badly beating Quy and leaving him on the roadside.

Friends Tuyen, Oku, and Carla are introduced navigating life in Toronto as young adults caught between their immigrant parents' worlds and their own. Tuyen's family is haunted by the loss of her brother Quy, who was separated from them as a child while fleeing Vietnam, and her brother Binh eventually takes it upon himself to track Quy down. While the friends deal with their own crises—most urgently Carla's brother Jamal being arrested for carjacking—Binh locates Quy, who has survived years in a refugee camp and the criminal underworld before arriving in Toronto. Tuyen accidentally photographs Quy and Binh together during the World Cup celebrations, eventually developing the film and recognizing her lost brother's face. Carla forces a reckoning with her neglectful father Derek, and Oku and Jackie begin a secret sexual relationship. The novel ends not in joy but in violence: Jamal carjacks the very car in which Quy is waiting to meet his parents, leaving him beaten on the roadside as his family runs toward him.

The core story of identity, belonging, and Quy's long-awaited return to his family.

A man who barely understands English sits apart from the three friends on the subway, pierced by their laughter.

Pirates board the refugee boat carrying young Quy and steal the diamonds sewn into his belt, nearly kidnapping him.

Tuyen fills her apartment with scavenged wood, rope, and debris as she begins planning an art installation called a lubaio.

Carla visits her brother Jamal at Mimico Correctional Institute and finds him sluggish, frightened, and feigning toughness.

Tuyen finds a photograph of the lost Quy on her sleeping mother's nightstand and feels a pang of jealousy.

Oku catches up with Jackie outside Tuyen's apartment and awkwardly apologizes; Jackie steps onto a passing streetcar and leaves.

A woman with a cleft palate at Pulau Bidong recruits young Quy to swim out and smuggle goods from a boat.

Tuyen begins ambushing strangers at Binh's store and on the street, asking them what they long for and recording their answers.

Jackie and Reiner run into Oku at a café; Jackie pointedly notes she is always available at her store.

Oku begins leaving recordings of jazz music on Jackie's answering machine, saying nothing to avoid putting his foot in his mouth.

Tuyen, Oku, and Carla play their word-riffing game at a bar; Carla speaks movingly about her mother crossing borders.

Nadine turns on Derek after Carla storms out and forces him to commit to bailing Jamal out of jail.

Quy steals a laptop containing criminal contacts and scam records from the second monk and flees to Canada.

Tuyen meets Quy for the first time at Binh's store and feels an immediate, inexplicable sense of dread toward him.

Carla visits the coffee shop where her mother once worked and quietly raises her cup in Angie's honor.

Alongside the main storyline, a series of quieter but crucial moments define the texture of each character's life. Quy's early years at Pulau Bidong are marked by the theft of his family's diamonds by pirates and his initiation into camp crime through a woman who recruits him to smuggle goods, while back in Toronto Tuyen channels her restlessness into an art project cataloguing what strangers long for. Carla visits Jamal in prison, Oku fumbles an apology to Jackie at a streetcar stop, and the whole group celebrates Korea's World Cup victory with a riffing game of words at a bar. As the novel moves toward its conclusion, Nadine forces Derek to take responsibility for Jamal's bail, and Quy arrives in Canada with a stolen laptop full of criminal contacts. Tuyen gets her first unsettling look at her long-lost brother when she meets him at Binh's store, and the novel closes with Carla making a quiet, private peace with her mother's memory at the café where Angie once worked.

The supporting details and subplots that shape the lives of four Toronto friends.

Carla races furiously through Toronto on her bicycle after visiting Jamal, running lights and unable to slow herself down.

Oku secretly stops attending his graduate classes and begins filling his days at cafés in Kensington Market instead.

Carla stands outside her old apartment building studying its walls and doorways for some trace of her dead mother.

Tuan drives Tuyen home from the family house and cryptically hints that good news about Quy is coming soon.

Oku cooks an elaborate meal for Tuyen and Carla, and the three argue over who is truly responsible for Jamal.

Oku recalls being stopped and wrongfully arrested by police despite carrying nothing, and deliberately choosing not to resist.

Oku grows genuinely envious of his friend Kwesi's illegal income and begins seriously considering joining his criminal ventures.

Oku tells his father Fitz off at the breakfast table, declaring he is a grown man who owes no report card.

Oku confesses to his mother Claire that he has dropped out of school but promises he will return next year.

Quy and two others leave Pulau Bidong alongside the monk Loc Tuc, trading one form of servitude for another.

The monk Loc Tuc teaches Quy to read, warning him that paper is where people get deceived and cheated.

Quy lies to the monk by claiming Kien has been sleeping with the woman, provoking the monk to kill Kien.

Carla recalls the day her mother Angie played a private game of signs with herself before stepping off the balcony.

Oku walks through Jackie's neighborhood and finally understands why she chose Reiner over men who remind her of that place.

Sitting in Binh's BMW outside his parents' house, Quy narrates his view that the reunion is simply a transaction he is owed.

Beneath the surface events of the novel lies a series of interior turning points in which each character confronts something they have long avoided. Carla processes her grief through her bicycle and a pilgrimage to her old apartment building, while Oku quietly abandons his graduate studies and begins to examine his fear of his father and his longing for Jackie. Tuyen's father delivers a cryptic hint about Quy that unsettles her, just as Oku and Carla wrestle with their own competing family obligations over an elaborate home-cooked meal. Meanwhile, Quy's past unfolds through his departure from the refugee camp, his uneasy education under the monk Loc Tuc, and his own calculated provocation that ends in a man's death. By the final movement of the novel, Oku openly defies his father, confesses the truth to his mother, and reaches a new understanding of Jackie, while Quy waits outside his parents' house and frames the long-awaited reunion entirely as a transaction he is simply collecting on.

The private turning points and revelations that push each character toward change.