After her first day in junior high, Alice McKinley says, "I can think of at least seven things about seventh grade that stink." But after a week, Alice has decided that maybe junior high isn't so bad. In fact, maybe she can go a whole year being friends with everyone, teachers and students alike. This is before she has her first run-in with Denise "Mack-Truck" Whitlock.

Alice, who has survived sixth grade and The Summer of the First Boyfriend, soon discovers that it isn't so easy to be Alice the Likeable. Even her best friends get in the way sometimes. And just when she is sure no one has more problems than she does, she is drawn into the ones her twenty-year-old brother and her widowed father are facing, which seem worse. Thinking a favorite teacher may hold the answer to at least one difficulty, Alice ends up with a bigger mess than ever.

She realizes, however, that it is possible to overcome disaster and to find a way out of troubles. Most of all, she discovers, it's good to have a father and a brother who love you and look out for you. In fact, sometimes, having family is almost enough.