After a young Jewish boy moves to Berlin with his family, he learns that his family agreed to watch a boy from the mental institution on the weekends. The two become friends, and the boy learns more about himself through meeting the other boy.

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.

Two boys become friends after one of them displays unflinching honesty in the face of a tyrannical teacher. Ultimately, their friendship is destroyed when the same honesty robs the second boy of some of his childhood ignorance.

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.

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.

A lonely young boy navigates his sexually-frustrated mother and closeted gay father's unhappy marriage.

A 5-year-old boy with a unique way of seeing the world feels alienated from his mother and tells her that he does not need her anymore. This viewpoint later causes him to lash out at his family, leading him to reflect on himself and his life.

A four-year-old boy who lives in Denmark is abandoned by his mother and sent to live with his aunt and very sick uncle, where he must endure the loss of yet another parental figure.

A young boy, who is still unaware of his future in which his mother dies and he becomes a miserable, unaccomplished middle-aged man, lives through an ever-so-slightly unusual day which would later become the one and only core memory he has of his mother.

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.