A young girl, still reeling from her dog's death, finds solace while picking up stones on the beach during her family's vacation.

Two sixteen-year-old girls in Australia come together at an outdoor semester of school, before university--one thinking about boys and growing up, the other about death and grief, but somehow they must help each other to find themselves.

School and life have become much more difficult since Ben Y's older brother died, especially since the indefinable Ace seems determined to seek her out without clarifying what kind of relationship she wants; mostly Ben Y tries to cope with her situation by going to the chatroom and obsessively typing messages to her brother who is no longer there--but when she starts getting messages from the ghost in the machine (apparently) she finds that her deepest...