Fifteen year old Alice is a shy girl who is having problems relating to her parents, Sam and Dot. Her primary confidante is her diary. When the family moves for Sam's new job as a college English professor, Alice is not scared of leaving the familiar but rather scared of approaching the unfamiliar. She ends up striking a friendship with another shy girl, Beth, their bond being their shared outside status. But during a period of extended non-contact due to Beth's vacation during the summer, Alice finds herself in the company of the "in" crowd, including a college boy named Richie who becomes her boyfriend. They introduce her to drugs, which she likes as they make her feel less inhibited. She becomes addicted, taking uppers to cope with the downs associated with dealing with her parents, and downers to get off the drug induced highs. She abandons Beth, and continues her drug use as she begins to feel that is the only time she now feels happy, with all of them starting to push in order to keep their heads above the surface financially. When Alice realizes the downward spiral she is in, she doesn't know how to get herself out of it. Alice eventually gets help from a priest, from a psychiatrist, and from her parents, who had always trusted her, who were initially oblivious to what she was doing, and who want to support her in the best way they think they can. Alice will have to do much on her own to get herself out of a her drug addiction, but what may not help are her parents' view that she needs to confront the world, which means confronting her past in the form of her old drug using friends.