Growing up in a small New Jersey town, aspiring painter Anna Stockard (Liza Weil) desperately longs for something more. Looking to escape the disheveled home she shares with her taunting little brother, a defeated and lonely mother, and a woefully predictable life, she searches the mailbox each day in hopes of a scholarship offer from the prestigious Manhattan art school Cooper Union. Tough but vulnerable, Anna is convinced that rebellion and adventure is the apprentice to great art. And who better to trot Anna on the wild side than her best friend, the troubled and reckless Brenda (Chad Morgan)? Along their journey of romance, risk and adventure, Anna learns some of the most difficult and important lessons of her life and finds the threshold of who she wants to be.