Attending high school for the first time, chronically ill Scarlet, with the help of her new friends, faces down bullies, endures her school-nurse mother's smothering over protectiveness, and eventually discovers the truth behind her illness--a truth thatputs much more than her life at risk.

No one will tell Oli why he and his mother are staying with relatives in the country without his father, but when he finds a secret of his own, that lurking in the attic is Eren, a creature hungry for stories, Oli begins to make sense of what is happening with his family and faces the choice of learning the truth or abandoning himself to Eren's world forever.

Between school and Al-Anon meetings, Jenna helps Mrs. Gladstone cope with escalating problems that result from the merger of Gladstone Shoes with Shoe Warehouse Corporation, while managing a new employee with a shoplifting record.

When her sixteen-year-old sister is hospitalized for depression and her parents want to keep it a secret, fourteen-year-old Elena tries to cope with her own anxiety and feelings of guilt that she is determined to conceal from outsiders.

Fifteen-year-old loner Jason struggles to hide his father's declining mental condition after his mother's death, but when his father disappears he must confide in the other members of a therapy group he has been forced to join at school.

Sydney's charismatic older brother, Peyton, has always been the center of attention in the family but when he is sent to jail, Sydney struggles to find her place at home and the world until she meets the Chatham family, including gentle, protective Mac, who makes her feel seen for the first time.

Seventeen-year-old Arden, of Cumberland, Maryland, finds solace in the blog of an aspiring writer who lives in New York City, but when she goes to meet him, she discovers that he is a very different person than she believes him to be.

Fifteen-year-old Mia feels like a ghost watching her own life when her parents' arguments escalate into a separation, triggering counseling sessions, strange behavior in her brother and sister, and a new connection with her brother's best friend.