Ambitious high school senior Samantha Hodges is a serious journalist, both for the school paper and for the yearbook, but she's just as serious about her friends, Nate, Gillian, and Rudy, all of whom are vying with her for a full-ride local scholarship to college. Very close to her mother, Emily, who is the school's guidance counselor, Samantha finds her reporting taking an investigative turn when two of her classmates and contenders for the scholarship are murdered.