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Rebellious teen Niki (Tricia Vessy) has nowhere to go. She doesn't get along with her widowed father (John Shea) or her selfish boyfriend (Scott Caan), and she's about to be kicked out of high school. The school's principal (Zeljko Ivanek) suggests she work counseling troubled children, but she winds up having a confrontation with the program's leader (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). Niki meets with an eight-year-old (Jacob Smith), reexamines her own childhood, gets help from her grandmother (Carroll Baker), rejects her boyfriend, finds a new friend (Ryan Francis), and soon is on the road to recovery, even reconnecting with her dad. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who appeared as the British optometrist in Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies, portrays an American in this film. Shown at the 1998 Santa Barbara Film Festival.