As a first step toward earning money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn answers an ad for a baby-sitter. Jolly, a seventeen-year-old mother of two who does factory work in the evenings, offers LaVaughn the job. Then Jolly is fired, and LaVaughn learns how to "take hold," as her mother says, of her own plans, of Jolly's situation, and of the children's needs as they all work on lessons in and out of school.