When a Black teenage girl is groped at a club, she quickly realizes that everyone will place the blame on her. She thinks back to an old friend who was cornered in a similar situation and abandoned by everyone else.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

In a society where women are prohibited from wearing clothing unless they are married, one woman risks friendships and her livelihood to remain free and unmarried, but finds that she cannot escape the social stigma of being unclothed.

A depressed woman drives her friends and therapist crazy, going ceaselessly on about the childhood trauma she incurred during her parents’ divorce settlings.

A young girl decides to run away with her best friend to a strange city only known in stories with the help of her talking dog after he loses everything in a world where success is scored to determine social status. But can they actually escape the controlling society they're running from?

In a near-future dystopian society, a Black, teenage girl determined to stay true to herself is valedictorian of her high school class; she knows success means she will be given over to an artificial intelligence-human hybrid surrounding her walled society of the last remaining humans.

A failing friendship with another couple leads a community college teacher to leave the country.

When the decision to build a new integrated school falls into the hands of an elderly woman, a small Tennessee town grows desperate to escape the control of her family, which has historically worked to prohibit progress and change.

After her father kills himself, a young girl runs away with a traveling, unhoused stranger she meets at the bus stop. The two scrape and save for a life together until one day, she wakes up and he's gone. After looking for him in the cold, surviving an assault, and accepting help from a stranger, the girl realizes he's betrayed her, taking their savings and leaving. The next year, she gives birth to their child.

A city employs people to act strangely to order to make others feel normal.