Feeling guilty after accidentally breaking his friend's leg, Rocky Fletcher takes on extra duties at school, from selling chocolate bars and managing his injured friend's student council campaign to playing both offense and defense on the football team.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, thirteen-year-old Tetsu and his family are sent to the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona where a fellow prisoner starts a baseball team, but when Tetsu's sister becomes ill and he feels responsible, he stops playing.
When his classmates die in a school fire, fourteen-year-old Joey is haunted by their deaths and struggles to survive amidst suspicion and anger from the town.
Dual perspectives reveal the aftermath of seventeen-year-old Michael MacKenzie's birthday celebration during which he discharges an antique Winchester rifle and unknowingly kills the father of high school classmate Jenna Ward.
Bus Mercer, shortstop for the Peach Street Mudders, wants desperately to be picked for the county all-star team, but he breaks his parents' rules for riding his new bike, and feelings of guilt affect his game.
When eleven-year-old Zack Jennings moves to Connecticut with his father and new stepmother, they must deal with the ghosts left behind by a terrible accident, as well as another kind of ghost from Zack's past.