In contemporary times, a fifteen-year-old creative writing whiz is sent to a gifted creatives summer camp in Massachusetts, where he meets a young male trombonist. As the two become friends and the writer gets to know the trombonist’s family and their troubles, he turns the trombonist and his dying sister into novel characters. Everything changes when the trombonist discovers the writer’s manuscript.

A divorced 16 year old girl reflects on how the sexual trauma she experienced as a child perpetuates in her relationships with men throughout her life, forcing herself to grow up too early and leaving her starved for affection and love.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

With plans to head home the minute the clock strikes 4:30, a young girl arrives at a birthday party fashionably late and realizes she is the only guest who came.

A sixteen-year-old girl spends a summer reading on a swing, dodging the expectations and pressures from her mother, father, and best friend.

A middle-aged woman looks forward to growing old because she believes older people are less beholden to other's expectations, but her friend disagrees.

A senior in high school realizes she is in love with an acquaintance within weeks of graduating, and she tries to initiate something before they both leave for college.

A high school boy makes a habit of stealing cars, picking up girls, and skipping school. When he begins to worry that he is getting into too much trouble, the boy must decide whether to seek help or continue his criminal lifestyle.

After being disruptive in class, a child is sent to a social worker’s office and ends up telling her she is actually a 2400-year-old child. She meets the rest of the social worker’s family and gets welcomed as a foster child, but her inability to help the aging grandfather regain his youth creates so much resentment in the family that she must run away.

After a fifteen-year-old girl makes a bet with her father that after high school she will leave home to never return, her father takes her to the train station early one morning and tells her to leave. When she winds up in Los Angeles, she finds her way there, despite the fact that she does not feel free.