When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with Cora, the sister she has not seen for ten years, and learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she too has something to offer others.

After his father dies and his mother goes into rehab, Eddie moves from the suburbs into his cousin's Boston loft, where he gradually adjusts to being one of the few white kids in a progressive private school, and learns how to feel like a normal teenager.