Rick Walker

Rick Walker is a fourteen-year-old foster child, living in a group home in Reno at the start of the story. He is filled with anger about the problems in his life, beginning with his mother abandoning him and accelerated by his grandmother's early death from cancer. Rick has been in the foster care system for four years, and his anger leads him to mindlessly throw rocks at a stop sign. He's not even aware of how many he's throwing. Rick finds himself in front of a judge and unable to explain his actions or express his emotional problems. He is sentenced to six months in a youth detention center.

Rick is essentially a good kid. He sees the corruption at the youth detention center, and he tells his social worker about a payoff from the maintenance workers to the guards. However, in the corrupt system of which...