In the summer of 2000, nationally-ranked cross country sensation and academic overachiever Emily Banks finds herself scrambling for the right answer for the first time in her life after a high school party ends with a confusing sexual encounter that casts her down a rabbit hole of humiliation and regret.

Unsure of who to confide in, Emily anchors her sanity around a summer science assignment on stargazing, where she travels from the safe cocoon of a home full of SAT prep books and overprotective parents into the light-polluted slate of the suburban Philadelphia night, where she learns that so many truths that seem so clear in the daytime-- friendships, family histories, what it means to be in love-- take on an entirely different character under the gaze of the distant stars.