The girl doesn’t consider herself a natural beauty and has been neglected for much of her life as a fat girl. She can’t even express herself through her clothes, as her private school has a strict dress code due to its conservative beliefs about promiscuity. She and her best friend often fantasize about doing drugs and getting intimate with boys. As she grows up, she realizes she has the power to see the auras and colors of others.

Their private school is cliquey, but the girl and her best friend stick to each other. They soon acquire a horrible reputation for their immature and disrespectful behavior in class, and they often get into trouble with their teacher. When the girl looks at the teacher, she sees a gray, fading aura, which, according to her, tends to be possessed those who will shortly die.

To prevent getting into further trouble at school, the girl and her best friend hang out off of school grounds. They go to a corner store where one of their classmates works so that they can harass him. They read books to each other over the phone some nights. They complain about how strict their parents are and how they know nothing about boys because of it. They dress up in vulgar and unrestricted ways, hoping to spur their imaginations.

Years later, the girl and her best friend stay in touch, wondering why they think about sex so much. The best friend goes over to Boston to major in drama, while the girl goes to a liberal arts collage in New York to study English. During their freshman year, their mothers catch them ordering lingerie, which gets them punished for their lack of modesty. Eventually, the girl realizes that she knows much less about sex than her best friend.

The girl’s suspicion is confirmed by winter break of freshman year, when the best friend reveals that she has a boyfriend. The best friend’s aura is incredibly passionate with red, which the girl doesn’t know how to read, though she has an off feeling about it. Soon enough, the best friend reveals that she has dropped out of college to live in a farmhouse with her boyfriend, which the girl finds crazy, but mostly, she’s jealous.

After winter break, the girl and her best friend write letters to each other, within which the girl learns a lot more about the new boyfriend and how they’re living off the land together. The girl wonders if her best friend has had sex yet, given that they promised before to tell each other right away if it ever happened.

By summer vacation’s time, the girl visits Maine where the best friend and her boyfriend are. She sees that he has a bright orange aura, which she thinks is a good sign. Together, they drive through town, and the best friend and her boyfriend describe what it’s like to live here. On the road, they happen upon a townie who’s the boyfriend’s best friend, and they drive further to where the farmhouse is. There, the girl meets their goat, has home-cooked food, and gets her room prepared by the boyfriend and his best friend. She tries to sleep later that night but is interrupted by an obese man in her room. She tells him off, and he goes downstairs to hang out supposedly with her best friend and her boyfriend.

The next morning, the girl finds a letter informing her that her best friend and her boyfriend went to skinny dip nearby. She gets ready and walks down a road leading there. She then happens upon a man with a gold aura who happily takes her where she needs to go. When they get there, the man with the gold aura strips and jumps in, asking her to follow suit. She jumps in, feeling enormous joy from everything, and together, they play toss back and forth with an apple.