Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Cohen recalls what it was like growing up with her imaginative but disturbed older sister Tess, and how she is striving to reclaim her own life since Tess died.

Rafe, an imaginative teenager, is tired of his school's obsession with rules at the expense of any and all creativity. Desperate to shake things up, he and his best friends have come up with a plan to break every single rule in the school and let the students run wild.

When Rafe Khatchadorian enters middle school, he teams up with his best friend, "Leo the Silent," to create a game to make school more fun by trying to break every rule in the school's code of conduct.