In an overpopulated and underprivileged suburban neighbourhood, Jacob, a boy immobilised on a wheelchair, fights to protect a girl he spots across the courtyard, doing all he can to warn her of the dark figure entering her room - The Recycling Man.

When Christy Murphy comes home past midnight with her boyfriend, Jerry, her parents send her to the Academy of the Blessed Virgin, a Catholic school run by kind but very strict nuns.