Carrie Sinclair is the protagonist of the text. Seventeen years old in the summer of 1987, Carrie is an intelligent young woman who cares deeply about world events and is socially conscious. She does not shy away from her family’s problematic past and the evil ways they made their money and stole land from Indigenous people, though these truths often haunt her and cause anxiety. Carrie openly mourns the death of her youngest sister, Rosemary, and often feels alone in this as her family grieves in different, more private ways. Carrie desires physical intimacy and male attention but views herself as ugly and inadequate compared to her sisters, especially because of her misaligned jaw, which her parents have fixed with intensive surgery.

Carrie struggles to see her good qualities, and her insecurities fuel a codeine addiction that nearly derails her life. She describes herself: “Me, I am an athlete and a narcotics addict. A leader and a mourner [...]. I fix my sisters’ problems. Those are the qualities that anyone can see. But my insides are made of seater, warped wood, and rusty nails” (36). The final lines of this quote allude to later events in the text, the nail-studded dock board that Carrie uses to kill Pfeff Pfefferman.