Afraid of being taken from his grandmother and placed in a foster home, Harold Davis, a Bluford High freshman, begins to work for the neighborhood drug dealer, Londell James, but Harold's choice leads him to world more dangerous than he could have imagined.
Lionel Shephard dreams of joining the NBA, but while his father disapproves of his plans, his teachers are threatening to fail him--unaware of his poor reading abilities--and Lionel needs to decide how far he is willing to go for his dreams.
Ren, forced to move from New York to the suburbs of Connecticut with her grief-stricken dad after her mother is killed in a freak accident, cannot seem to fit in at her new school--thanks primarily to popular snob Farrin, but when she finds out Farrin is involved in an online relationship with an older man, she discovers friends she never knew she had.
Darcy's plans for a great summer seem to be evaporating when she finds herself traumatized over an earlier incident with Brian, and with her boyfriend in Detroit, her grandmother recently deceased, and her parents and friends all hiding secrets of their own, she does not know where to turn for help.
Tyray Hobbs, once among the most feared students at Bluford High, loses his reputation after being humiliated by Darrell Mercer, and with a broken hand, troubled family, and no friends, decides to use a gun to get revenge.
Cindy Gibson, an African-American teenager struggling with her mother's neglect and her mother's boyfriend's emotional abuse, must find strength she did not know she had when the boy she thought would be her savior begins beating her.
Darcy's distress over her boyfriend Hakeem's move to Detroit, her grandmother's increasing frailness, and other changes in her life, leads her to make a big error in judgement when she becomes involved with the brother of a young woman who is employing Darcy as a babysitter.
Presents a selection of images of high school students at their proms, photographed by Mary Ellen Mark at thirteen schools across the United States, in a book that includes a DVD of the film, also titled Prom, by filmmaker Martin Bell.
