Nearly everyone can be won over by Henri "Halti" Haltiwanger. He is the favoured first-generation Haitian son of his affluent New York City neighbours as well as a talented debater and popular student at the esteemed FATE academy. His easy grins conceal a fierce desire to enrol at Columbia University, his ideal university. There is only one individual who seems impervious to Henri's charms: his "intense" classmate and neighbour Corinne Troy. She blackmails Henri into assisting her in changing her reputation at school after discovering his dishonest dog-walking plot. Henri concurs, seeing a possible benefit for himself. Soon, what began as a joint hustle develops into something unexpected that none of them had anticipated.? This is a sharply funny and insightful novel about the countless hustles we have to keep from doing the hardest thing: being ourselves.