In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when he starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.

Feeling awkward and ugly is one of several reasons sixteen year old Kevin is uncomfortable with the publicity about his act of accidental heroism, but when a reporter photographs him apparently being unpatriotic, he speaks out and encourages people to think about what the symbols of freedom really mean.

Karl Shoemaker, starting his senior year in Lightsburg, Ohio, in 1973, vows to break out of the therapy group he has been forced to attend during school hours and become "normal."