When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to Berkeley to begin college, it is her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she has not, Diane has worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven LA and finagled them spots in an affluent public school. But when she's admitted to a state hospital, it falls to her closest friend to look after the children and to keep their mother's dreams for them alive. At Berkeley, Walter discovers a passion for architecture just as he realizes his life as a student may come to an end. Back home in LA, his sister, Lina, working after school in an ice-cream parlor while her wealthy classmates are preparing for Ivy League colleges, wages a high-stakes gamble to go with them. And Donnie, the little brother whom everybody loves, begins to hide in plain sight - coding and gaming and drifting toward a life on the beach.