Expelled from school again, McCarton Wheeler has been sent from the east coast by his wealthy parents to the Kane Center in Los Angeles for psychological evaluation.
Seduced by his apparent can-do attitude, McCarton is released by the staff before Christmas and returns home to New York. But a family quarrel erupts on Christmas Eve - and in a fit of compulsive depression McCarton ODs on his mother’s Valium tablets. He is discovered by his younger sister and spends Christmas day in hospital. Insistent that he wasn’t trying to kill himself, McCarton is nevertheless unable to offer an explanation for his behavior.
The following day, McCarton discovers that he is to be transferred to Moorland, a secure psychiatric unit, for further observation. Convinced he will be incarcerated forever, McCarton escapes through a bathroom window and catches a Greyhound bus to Chicago, where he finds a distant uncle to stay with.
When his whereabouts are discovered by his father, McCarton agrees to remain at his uncle’s while his father flies out to collect him. But unable to follow through, he decamps in the middle of the night and takes a cab to downtown Chicago, where he witnesses a violent robbery at a convenience store. Greatly disturbed, McCarton nevertheless finds himself powerless to intervene.
Increasingly at odds with his new surroundings, McCarton realizes that he is no match for the streets and he makes the mature decision to return to New York and “face the music.”
Rundown and edgy, he takes the subway back to his uncle’s house but while waiting for the train, fate intervenes once more as one of the men who robbed the convenience store appears on the otherwise deserted platform…