Randall is an ambitious boy trying to survive in a college town. He is also secretly a teenage runaway. His parents' failing marriage and a growing impatience to escape his small town prompts him to start a new life for himself. Precariously playing the part of a 21-year-old, while balancing school and his job in pizza delivery, is a bigger challenge than he thought, especially with the temptations of college life at every turn. He wants to make it on his own, yet battles the despair and lonliness of living a lie that both repels him from and pulls him back to his troubles at home. He meets new friends, confronts his adversaries, falls in love, and learns, sometimes the hard way, the painful truths of the real world. His grandfather is a voice of reason, but thoughts of his mother wrack his conscience with guilt. It is the hardships he continually faces that may prove to be too much, though, challenging his beliefs, battering him emotionally and spiritually, bringing him to the edge of the abyss.