Seventh-grader Sharkita "Kita" embarks on a tumultuous journey to keep her family together while handling the consequences of her mother's alcoholism.

When his volatile father is picked to become an astronaut for NASA's mission to Mars, seventeen-year-old Cal, an aspiring journalist, reluctantly moves from Brooklyn to Houston, Texas, and looks for a story to report, finding an ally (and crush) in Leon,the son of another astronaut.

Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.

"Alex Blackwood is really good at getting the girl she wants, but coming from a broken home with an alcoholic mother she finds commitment difficult, even when she thinks she is in love. Impossibly awkward Molly Parker has a crush on the cool Cora Myers, but she does not know how to even start a conversation, much less make a connection. Now they are all at college in Pittsburgh. Alex decides to 'help' Molly get the girl, while proving to her own flame...