Rayven James is one of two Black students in the junior class at Queen Mary Catholic High School. But unlike the other Black girl — her friend Sonia — she does not come from a comfortable upper-middle-class home. She’s on scholarship at Queen Mary and lives with her two-job-working single mother in a 1200-square-foot house.

When Principal Vargas dies suddenly, Rayven isn’t too upset: he wasn’t the nicest to her. Vargas is replaced by Mrs. McGee, who — one week in — calls Rayven into her office. She informs Rayven that, in accordance with the school’s dress code policy, her dreadlocks constitute a “distracting” hairstyle and forces her to cut them off or risk expulsion. Rayven and her mom are furious, but they choose not to fight back, since Queen Mary is the only good school Rayven has the opportunity to attend.

Rayven tearfully cuts off her locs (which she had spent 4 years growing and caring for), makes a bouquet of them, and sets them on her windowsill. At school, other students whisper about her new short Afro. But, in the place Rayven’s locs once sat, flowers begin to grow. Although Rayven explains that she has no control over the flowers blooming from her head, Mrs. McGee chastises her for lying. Rayven visits the school nurse, as well as her doctor, both of whom are puzzled and diagnose the flowers as a medical condition. Frustrated by her daughter’s treatment by the administration, Ravyen’s mom comes in and threatens to sue the school.

One day, a varsity football player tries to pluck a flower off Rayven’s head, but he is stung by a bee — which had been protecting the flower. After the incident, Rayven is again called into the principal’s office. Mrs. McGee tries to cut off the flowers with scissors, but a swarm of bees, wasps, hornets, and hummingbirds come to Rayven’s rescue and drive Mrs. McGee away.

Mrs. McGee leaves the school, and the flowers fall out of Rayven’s head. She decides to start growing locs again, hoping the new principal will allow them — but at the beginning of her senior year, she is again told to cut them. On her drive home that day, however, she notices something pink growing from her hair.