Fifteen-year-old Ellis is getting ready to leave his luxurious home in the foothills of Tucson for his freshman year at Gates Academy, an East Coast prep school. This means leaving behind Wendy, his flaky, new age mother and the only real father he has ever known, Goat Man.

Craig is a high-school junior, in the gifted program, infatuated with his best friend's girl. When he realizes he's suicidal, he checks himself into the psychiatric ward of a hospital, thinking they'll do an observation, help him, and send him home in time for school the next day. Once in, however, he must stay for a week; the juvenile ward is being renovated, so he's in with adults as well as a few youths. Bobby, a man with a young daughter, shows him around; Craig notices Noelle, about his...