At twelve years old, Lola’s mother calls her into the bathroom to feel her mother’s breast. She has discovered a lump. Her mother soon receives a double mastectomy and begins treatment for breast cancer. As Lola enters her teenage years, she and her mother begin to have explosive arguments. Lola begins to hate her “Old World Dominican” mother with her expectations of a "perfect" Dominican daughter. With the help of her friend Karen, Lola shaves her head and adopts a punk style, angering her mother. When her mother sees the hairstyle, she tries to slap Lola, but Lola punches her mother’s hand. Lola talks to her aunt and learns her mother had been beaten as a young girl before fleeing her home of Santo Domingo for Paterson, New Jersey. At fourteen, Lola starts staying out late, so her mother changes the locks at night, but Lola’s little brother Oscar always lets her back in. In anger, Lola and her mother threaten to kill each other and call each other crazy. One night, Lola’s mother reveals the doctors are doing more tests on her. Oscar expresses concern but Lola hopes her mother dies from the cancer. The following weekend, Lola runs away with a white boy named Aldo who she met at club in downtown Paterson. She starts living with Aldo and his father in their home in Wildwood, New Jersey. She loses her virginity to Aldo and gets a job selling fries on the Jersey Shore. After Aldo makes racial jokes aimed at Lola, she calls Oscar and asks him to bring her money. When Lola meets Oscar at a nearby coffee shop in Wildwood, her mother and her aunt are waiting to meet her as well. Furious, Lola tries to run away but comes back when she sees her mother has fallen trying to chase her. When she checks on her, Lola sees her mother was faking the fall to trap her daughter. Lola’s mother sends Lola to live with her grandmother in Santo Domingo. She enrolls in a private school and becomes friends with a girl named Rosio and starts dating a boy named Max. She notices a feeling that is growing inside herself but cannot articulate what it is. One night, Lola returns home to find her Abuela looking at old photo albums. Her Abuela explains that Lola’s mother also ran away from home, also fell in love with the wrong man, also argued with her mother. The feeling inside Lola grows stronger.