In a rural town, a woman attempts to run away, with her three children, from her abusive husband. While the feat seems straightforward at first, a series of complications causes their escape to become increasingly precarious.

A girl flees her home when her parents want to send her back to her abusive husband.

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.

When a young black man from the Bronx unwittingly becomes an accomplice to the murder of a police officer, he must protect the murderer (his best friend) and flee the life he used to know.

A young orphaned girl becomes frightened when she hears rustling outside her window, which she believes comes from a prisoner who escaped from the nearby prison.

A man returns to New Hampshire after years of hiding from his past to handle his dead father's affairs. When he encounters an old friend-turned-enemy and a local girl goes missing, the past he tried to run away from comes to light in a heart-racing turn of events.

Compiling notes for an English essay, a sixteen-year-old girl recounts her middle-class upbringing, kleptomania, and eventual coercion into prostitution and assisting with drug use. After she suffers violence and abuse, she is eventually rescued — but the experience traumatizes her.

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 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.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.