At the beginning of the novel, their friendship is strained because Hailey unfollowed Starr's Tumblr account after Starr posted a picture of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy murdered for whistling at a white woman.
Hailey is one of Starr's friends at Williamson Prep. Although Maverick doesn't accept Chris at first, the two grow closer throughout the novel. However, he's also rich and white Starr feels that this creates distance between them, while Chris insists that Starr let him into the side of her life she usually tries to hide from her Williamson friends.
He shares Starr's love for Jordan sneakers and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Starr and Sekani frequently have good-natured fights and bicker with each other. At first, Starr's parents don't tell Sekani that Starr witnessed Khalil's death, but eventually tell him as Starr gets more involved with efforts to protest the shooting. Sekani is Starr's younger brother, who also attends Williamson Prep. Ultimately, Maverick convinces Seven to pursue the opportunities open to him and attend a college outside of the city. He's eighteen, and is accepted to many colleges, but doesn't want to leave Garden Heights because he feels the need to protect Iesha and his sisters from King's physical abuse. Seven has a close relationship with Starr-they play basketball together every month, he drives her home from school every day-and he supports his sister during the difficult grieving period following Khalil's death. Seven is Starr's half-brother Maverick is Seven's father, and Iesha, the gangbanger King's girlfriend, is his mother. At the beginning of the book, she works as a nurse in a Garden Heights clinic, but she later secures a higher-paying job in a different hospital which makes the family's move financially feasible. Lisa worries for the safety of her family and convinces Maverick that their family should move out of the Garden Heights neighborhood. She encourages Starr to do as much as she is comfortable with in terms of activism and speaking out. Lisa, Starr's mother, is an invaluable source of support and care for her daughter throughout the novel. Although he feuds with his brother-in-law and struggles to accept Starr's white boyfriend, by the end of the book Maverick makes peace with those who care about Starr. He supports Starr throughout the novel, inspiring her to not be silent in the face of injustice. A former gangbanger, Maverick spent three years in prison before fatherhood inspired him to get out of the gang system. Maverick, Starr's father, owns and operates a grocery store in Garden Heights and is a firm believer in the tenets of Black Power espoused by Huey Newton. The novel follows Starr as she attempts to navigate the two worlds of Garden Heights and Williamson Prep while simultaneously dealing with grief over Khalil's death and her forays into activism in response to the unjust shooting. When she was ten, Starr saw her friend Natasha killed in a drive-by shooting the trauma of this experience is repeated at the beginning of the novel when Starr witnesses the death of her friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Starr Carter is the novel's protagonist, a sixteen-year-old African-American living in the mostly poor and black neighborhood of Garden Heights while attending the upscale, largely-white private school Williamson Prep.