Twelve-year-old Kenny Reed is a scholarship student at a private school across the river from his apartment in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, which he shares with an older brother and sister and their abusive mother. He has always lived in the shadow of his siblings' success, but when he watches a performance of the opera Aida, Kenny discovers costumes and decides to become a costume designer.

In the midst of tumultuous family dynamics and domestic violence, the three siblings find themselves achieving their dreams and breaking the cycle of violence in this coming-of-age story.