Ambitious high school senior Samantha Hodges is a serious journalist, both for the school paper and for the yearbook, but she's just as serious about her friends, Nate, Gillian, and Rudy, all of whom are vying with her for a full-ride local scholarship to college. Very close to her mother, Emily, who is the school's guidance counselor, Samantha finds her reporting taking an investigative turn when two of her classmates--and contenders for the scholarship--are murdered.

When Marvin comes home from work one day, he discovers that not everything is as it was when he left - it seems that the air outside isn't for everyone anymore.

A Chinese teenager travels with her mom to States as a translator to find her abandoned sister after the One-child-policy. When she finds the sister, she has to choose between telling their mom and risking their relationship or keeping it to herself.