NaTasha has a wonderful life in affluent Park Adams: she's popular, wealthy, and being the only African American in her school has never even crossed her mind. So when she spends the summer with her spitfire grandmother, Tilly, volunteering at a teen crisis center for troubled girls in the Bronx, she's surprised to find that for the first time in her life she doubts herself. The girls at Amber's Place are rough, streetwise, sure of themselves, and they wield their secrets like knives. They hate NaTasha. They call her a sellout. She could run back to Park Adams, and everything would go back to normal. But she doesn't. There are two boys in the neighborhood who like her and back home she's never had a boyfriend. And there a couple of girls at the center who have opened up to her, showing her a light at the end of the tunnel. So NaTasha stands her ground and discovers that friendship, love, and joyful self-discovery have been waiting for her all along.