For fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Joanne, the sensible, responsible kid in the Johnston family, the summer days seem endless and routine. When a cute, smooth-talking traveler from out east shows up during her shift at Johnston's Midwest Dairy Stand and invites her to join him on his road trip to California, she is flattered and tempted. She knows it's crazy and possibly dangerous-a teenage hitchhiker has just been murdered nearby-but she despairs of anything exciting ever happening to her; this could be her last chance. She takes some money from the till, leaves a note for her mom, locks up the stand, and climbs into the stranger's Porsche. As they travel west, Joanne discovers that Brice is many things, not all of them trustworthy or kind, but she is so in love with the idea of being wanted, she keeps finding ways to please him and excuse his quixotic moods-until the two are confronted by an emergency on the highway. The crisis plunges Joanne back into the childhood nightmare of her father's death and forces her to choose between her dreams of romance and what she knows she has to do.