Aiden Carson, an average nineteen-year-old boy, has his license, his parents are still together, and he has the best younger sister he could ever ask for, twelve-year-old Juliana. He isn't a perfect kid with an ideal life, though. His parents constantly argue, his only friend abandons him, and he's one of the worst competitors on the school's swim team. Even then he still has Juliana in his life, and she is always able to make him smile on his darkest of days. Everything is going alright, that is, until just another rainy October night on the West Coast-but it turns out to be anything but normal. Withdrawing from everything that is constant in his life, his grades start to drop and he becomes isolated from everyone. No one can penetrate the dark wall that keeps him away from his peers. That's when he meets Reuben, a geeky asthmatic who everyone avoids, and Zoey, the lonely photographer who's always smiling. As their friendships grow, Aiden's dark wall starts to crumble and he slowly begins to live again.