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Bowen wakes Knox up, furious because his headphones are missing. Meanwhile, they hear their parents arguing loudly about Knox. They decide they must somehow get their father to America quickly before their parents’ marriage is destroyed. Knox decides that it is a bad idea to pawn the headphones, and the children decide to sell some of their mom’s stuff at the garage sale.

The children go through their mother’s old, stored clothes and decide what to sell. They see a paper written by somebody named Will, and the professor who graded it thought that the thesis was wrong because there was no way that China would become a major economic force in the world. Later, the children wonder about Will’s identity.

Knox tells his classmates at school about the garage sale, and he tells Christopher that he will hide Bowen’s headphones until he forgets about them, because it is too risky to sell them. Christopher tells Knox that he looked into Uber Eats, but both Uber Eats and hiring somebody to deliver food are too expensive.

Julie gets another job interview, and the children prepare for the garage sale. They plan to have everybody who comes to the sale connect with their father on LinkedIn. Lea offers a woman a cucumber eye mask if she will endorse Andrew on the app.

The kids make $180 at their garage sale, but Julie comes in and wonders where the antiques have gone. She was saving family heirlooms and the children sold them. She asks about a velvet box she had, and the children tell her that they sold it for a quarter because it would not open. They did not know that Julie’s anniversary ruby earrings were in that box. The children hope to somehow get the earrings back for their mother.

Lea comes to the boys’ room and tells them that they must get the earrings back. They believe the person who took the box had a dog, and they remember a neighbor has a security camera, so they plan to check to see if they can find the people who bought the box.

The next morning, they go to the neighbor’s house and ask to see the security footage. They tell the man about the garage sale and why they want to have it. He is about to give them $100, but they tell him that they cannot take money they have not earned. Bowen gets the footage and fixes the man’s Wi-Fi while Lea prepares him a cucumber facial. He gives them $20 for what they have done for him.

The children look at the footage and find the dog with the two men who purchased the box. They see a dog, and when Bowen goes to touch it, the dog’s owner gets angry. He calls Bowen a racial slur and tells him that he does not want people like him to touch his dog because, “People like him are the reason we now have this virus in the world” (193). He tells Bowen to “[g]o back to where you came from” (193). When he starts to call Bowen and his people filthy, Lea and Knox step in, saying that Bowen is their brother, and the man leaves angrily. Knox and Lea try to comfort Bowen, and Bowen asks them not to tell their mother.

Bowen tells Knox that Knox cannot understand how he feels because things are different for Bowen, who does not like being seen as a virus-carrier. Knox tells Bowen about his classmate who teases him, and Bowen tells him that when that would happen to him, he would put on his earphones before he lost them.

Bowen gets the phone number of the two men who purchased the earrings and decides not to tell Julie, because they do not want her hopes dashed if they cannot get the earrings back. The next day, during Julie’s interview, the kids go to try to retrieve the earrings. They see a woman who is unhoused on the way, and Knox gives her a dollar. Knox worries they could become unhoused if Julie cannot find a job soon.

The kids arrive at the spacious home of Maximillian and Pax Taradippin, the two men who purchased Julie’s box. The men have been stockpiling masks to sell to people at high prices.

The men will not sell the earrings back for all of the garage sale money. Julie calls, telling the kids that she passed her first interview.

At home, Julie tells them that if she passes the next interview, she will have to go to New York for a third interview. They decide to stay at Aunt Jackie’s house if Julie gets the interview. The children ask Julie her opinion about giving money to people who are unhoused. Julie tells them that her parents lost their restaurant jobs one summer and they had to live in the car. She explains that the children’s’ grandparents did not tell them because they were embarrassed, but that she is starting to realize that she needs to tell her children about these kinds of things.

The brothers consider what it would be like to be unhoused and have to live in a car together. Bowen explains that there are not as many people who are unhoused in Asia as there are in America because people in Asia consider it important to take care of their family members. 

The children learn that Andrew now has over 500 connections on LinkedIn, so Knox starts to apply for jobs for him. He and Christopher discuss Nextdoor, and Knox plans to write a good review about Christopher’s family’s website to get more diners. As Christopher and Knox discuss the app, Knox is surprised when their teacher returns his math test, with an A- for his grade.

Knox tells his mom about his A- and Bowen criticizes him for the minus. Bowen gets ready for track practice, and Knox asks to go watch and play with his soccer ball on the turf.

Bowen is exhausted after practice, and the coach tells him that he is on the team and that he will catch up with the rest of the players soon. Julie picks them up, and Bowen tells her how much faster everybody else is than him. Knox writes a positive review for Christopher’s restaurant online.

Christopher tells Knox that the Nextdoor post has helped boost sales at the restaurant. The kids have not told Andrew about his LinkedIn account. Bowen is going to conduct the phone interviews as if he is Andrew. Later that night, Knox worries that he may have to go back to Hong Kong if the virus spreads in the US, and he does not want to leave Christopher.

Kids at school are worried about the virus, and Knox tells them how to correctly use hand sanitizer because he learned a lot about it watching videos with his mom in Hong Kong. Knox stays after school to help Mrs. Turner clean up, and she says she hopes they do not have to start doing school remotely, partially because she worries about the millions of kids who receive free lunch at school and what they would do if schools were shut down.

Julie confirms that the children are not on free lunches, but that she was as a child. She explains that after being unhoused, her parents got a small home, but she still could not participate in sports because they could not risk an injury when they did not have health insurance. She says that her situation was different from that of her children because she will soon get a job, and that she has a second interview that day. She says that she was not too embarrassed about getting free lunches, but she was nervous about her name. Now people call her Julie, but back then, she went by Wei Wei. Students and even teachers made fun of her name, and she decided to change her name after a college professor refused to call her by her real name and instead called her Will. She reported the professor, and he was eventually removed.