Starr sometimes feels like she is two different people: the version who lives in her community of Garden Heights and the modified, more "appropriate" version needed for Williamson Prep.

Garden Heights is fairly laden with crime. Starr and her family live in her nana's old house. The constant break-ins in this area had made her Uncle Carlos nervous, so he moved his mother into his own home. Starr's own father is a former drug lord, so Starr knows that crime is all around her yet learns to navigate it fairly well because Garden Heights is her home. Even on the night Khalil is shot, Starr is constantly recalling all the advice her parents have given her about what to do if pulled over by police: do what she's told, don't move if a cop's back is to her, and don't make sudden movements. In Garden Heights, she speaks freely with people who come from backgrounds much like herself.

Starr feels like she has to "[flip] the switch in [her] brain" to become Williamson Starr. This version of herself doesn't use slang, making sure to only speak Standard American English so as not to sound "ghetto." She feels that slang equates to "hood" to the kids at Williamson. She has to tone down her reactions so that no one will consider her an "angry black girl."

Starr doesn't like the way she modifies her behavior and speech to meet the prep school expectations at her almost exclusively white school:

I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway. (chapter 5)

This conflict of expectations continues to propel the plot as Starr seeks for a way to be true to herself and find justice for Khalil.