When 15-year-old Ahmed inadvertently outs himself to his parents, they take him to a residential treatment center in the Nevada desert, Serenity Ridge, where he's tortured, molested, and put through a "straight" rehabilitation program. After 11 months, Ahmed manages to escape to a safe house for runaway gay teens in San Francisco, where he meets a slew of other kids like himself, all with their own stories to tell, most just as traumatizing as his own or worse. But life inside the safe house is never entirely safe, as Ahmed, now known as Ben, learns to his sorrow just as he begins to let his guard down. -- Publisher.

Includes discussion questions.