Dan is a fairly normal fifteen-year-old—he likes girls (obviously), hates school (ditto), and he lives to play bass guitar. But at home, things aren't normal at all. His mother is schizophrenic and uses a system of numbers she's developed to determine if something is good or evil. She plasters the walls with pages of obscure calculations and lists of digits, and obsesses over them long into the night—and her behavior is only getting more and more erratic. One day, Dan's numbers turn bad, and she begins to threaten him physically. Dan could just run away, but he's worried about what would happen to the nine-year-old brother he's fought so hard to protect. All Dan wants is a normal life, but how can he keep his family together and keep them safe at the same time?