The first step in changing your life is admitting that there's a problem.After suffering ongoing verbal abuse at home, 16-year-old Tyler is convinced to leave his small town one night by Mason, an older boy with a worse home life and severe anger management issues. Mason's plan-to steal a car and drive into the city-is thwarted when the duo run out of gas on the highway and are rescued by Sean Dakota, an intimidating former member of a heavy metal band who many assumed had died when he went missing from his California home a year earlier. Dakota temporarily takes the two misfits in, but when Tyler realizes how quickly Mason will bite the hand that feeds him and how one-sided their friendship really is, he vows to change. This novella may be short, but it provides a variety of topics for readers to discuss, and the characters have a surprising amount of depth. While some may question the relatively quick resolutions to Tyler's problems, there's still enough Sturm und Drang to make the ending seem plausible enough, and this is a strong choice for reluctant readers. Main characters are minimally described and read as White; Tyler's grandfather emigrated from an unspecified non-English–speaking country.Brief but memorable. (Fiction. 12-18)