In mid-1990s New York City, Patti, Angela, Emma and Nikki are high school best friends preparing for life after graduation. Their dreams for the future are very different: Angela wants to be a poet, Emma and Nikki are heading to college, and Patti is a young mother looking for stability in her child’s life. But the four bright young women are fiercely loyal to each other in a way only teenagers can be. Their lives are turned upside down when Nikki unexpectedly commits suicide after being sexually assaulted. Grieving, angry and forced to return to everyday life with no satisfying outlet for their feelings, the girls must grow up with a new understanding of the patriarchal world they live in.