Nightcrawling

Kiara and Alé take the bus to Joy Funeral Home. Kiara recalls her father’s death from prostate cancer, the symptoms of which began while he was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. At the funeral home, Kiara steals clothing while Alé makes up a plate of food from the buffet. They escape to a nearby park, where they eat the food, then share a joint, and Kiara tells Alé about the upcoming rent increase. Kiara leaves to find Marcus.

Marcus is at the recording studio owned by his friend Cole, from whom he rents the space. Cole’s girlfriend, Shauna, and his friend, Tony, are there as well. Kiara speaks with Marcus, worried about the rent increase and asking him to look for a job. Marcus refuses, insistent that focusing on his music will pay off. Kiara listens to Marcus rapping for a while, then asks Tony if he will speak with Marcus about finding a job. Tony says he will if Kiara comes to his house that night. Kiara agrees. On her way out, she briefly talks with Shauna, who cautions her not to get caught up with the group of men.

Kiara walks from business to business in downtown Oakland, attempting to apply for a job. She is repeatedly turned away for not having a résumé. She enters a nude dance club but is told she must be 18 to apply. A former girlfriend of Marcus’s, Lacy, catches Kiara’s attention. She works at the club as a bartender and makes Kiara a free drink. As Kiara drinks, she recalls her mother’s suicide attempt. After more drinks, Lacy tells Kiara she will no longer serve her, and Kiara leaves. A man seated at the bar follows her, propositioning Kiara for sex. She follows him to the rooftop of a building. Afterward, the man pays her $200.

While trying to determine how she will get home, Kiara meets a woman named Camila who gives her advice about becoming a sex worker. Kiara, realizing how quickly she was able to earn money with the man on the roof, pursues job options as an escort over the next few days, only to be told that she cannot be hired until she is legal. Kiara devises a plan whereby Tony will keep her safe from johns.

On her first night of sex work, Kiara is catcalled by many men, then approached by a small man who takes her to his car a few blocks away. After they have sex, he gives Kiara $50, and she vows to secure more up front next time. She gives the money to Tony, who asks her if she will commit to a relationship with him if he gets a job. Kiara tells him she has to think about Marcus because he’s the only family she has left. Tony returns the cash to Kiara, then leaves.

The next morning, Kiara awakens to the sound of Trevor in the pool outside their apartment complex; he has dropped his key chain in the water and is searching for it. Kiara offers to take him to play basketball and thinks of the day Dee gave birth to Trevor while Trevor gets ready. She notes that Dee attempted to give up her substance use and care for Trevor in the early days of his life, but now she spends most of her time getting high at other apartments.

Kiara and Trevor receive threatening looks from kids already on the basketball court but convince them to play for money. Afterward, back at the apartment complex, Trevor begins to cry, confessing to Kiara that he has been betting on basketball games in hopes of earning money to pay the rent so that he and Dee will not be evicted.

Marcus takes a job waiting tables at the club where Lacy works but loses it within a week, storming out after an altercation with a customer. Later that night, Kiara takes a job with a friend of the previous john. However, when a police car pulls up near the john’s car, Kiara flees, afraid of being caught.

She conveys her friend Alé’s backstory. Alé is a skateboarder Kiara met through Marcus. She is smart, and Kiara worried she would leave to go to college upon graduating high school. Alé’s mother suffered a stroke, however, and this required Alé to assist with the family restaurant. Her younger sister, Clara, went missing when Alé was 12.

Kiara returns home, passing eviction notices on both Dee and Trevor’s apartment door and her own. She remembers Marcus piercing her ears as a 16th-birthday present, then phones their mother. Her mother is unsympathetic about Kiara’s need for money, instructing her to turn to Uncle Ty. Kiara thinks of her parents’ relationship: her mother pursued her father, a respected member of the Black Panther Party, for twelve years; then the two married.

Kiara’s mother promises to give her Uncle Ty’s phone number if Kiara visits her at the halfway house where she lives.