Over the nine days before her seventeenth birthday, Mim’s life turns upside down. In the end, the same things look entirely different.

Rule number one: I will not turn out like my mother.

Mim knows what she wants, and where she wants to go. Anywhere but home-in a dead suburb and with a mother who won’t get off the couch. Her two older brothers are in prison, so now Mim has to retrieve a lost package for her mother. Does this make her a drug runner? She’s set herself rules to live by, but she’s starting to break them. And she can’t seem to find answers to all the new questions:

Why is the monster dog Gargoyle hidden in the back shed?

Why is the boy she sent Valentines to for years now suddenly a creep?

And who is the mysterious girl next door who moans at night?