A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
With all of his friends headed to a party on the last night of 1999, Austin takes an extra shift at the Quality Mart gas station and is forced to look down the barrel of what it means to graduate high school and face a future stuck in his middle of nowhere hometown. He's got one night to make his dreams come true, legal or not, and he's taking it.
Burdened by unfulfilled expectations, the wife of a businessman-turned-politician plans to leave her disintegrating marriage on the eve of an important campaign dinner...