Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.
While a convenience-store clerk navigates the pitfalls of his father's imprisonment and the baffling attentions of two young women, a high school freshman endures her parents' fundamentalism and cruel classmates by joining a circle of dark misfits.