Seventeen-year-old David Otto is rarely seen as anything more than a misfit. With his eyeliner, black clothes, and piercings, he's "different". But his troubles extend beyond school, to parents who don't accept him, and to a traumatic event in his past that made him withdraw even more. With the threat of not graduating, an unknown shared grief with the quarterback, and parents who reject the very person he is, life in his hometown wasn't very appealing for David. He was all set to run and leave everything behind, until he met twenty-four-year-old Army recruiter Jason Travis, whose casual intervention would change the course of David's life forever.