On a sunny August day, readers are introduced to 17-year-old narrator and protagonist Maverick “Mav” Carter. As Mav and his best friend King play basketball against Mav’s older cousin Dre and friend Shawn, Mav informs the reader that “when it comes to the streets, there are rules,” an important set of guidelines as intuitive as breathing (3). Mav breaks one such rule by losing the game in front of his girlfriend, Lisa.

Mav and King are “li’l homies,” junior members of a gang called the King Lords. Shawn is the current leader of the gang, but that title once belonged to Mav’s father, Adonis, with Dre’s father, Zeke, acting as his right-hand man. Adonis is now in prison and both of King’s parents are dead. The other King Lords call Mav and King “Li’l Don” and “Li’l Zeke” after their fathers, which makes Mav feel small. It’s as if he is “not old enough to go by [his] own name yet” (5).

Angered by losing, King tries to start a fight. Shawn warns that if King can’t control his temper, he’ll be beaten up by the “big homies,” older gang members.