Minerva feels like a misfit in her family and at high school. If it weren't for her best friend, Tim Wells, an outstanding, popular athlete, she'd be totally isolated.
Tm needs a cover and Minerva is the only one he trusts. Of course she knows he's using her, but she's a loyal friend. Minerva follows Tim into gay bookstores and bars, where she feels uncomfortable, until she finds friends and an opportunity to see herself and the world in new ways.
In the course of the her senior year, Minerva sets boundaries, flaunts the rules, revises her opinions, and resists others' efforts to define her, even when illness and violence intrude.