Ohio high school student Scott Thomas is a good student and nice guy - albeit a little predictable - who is about to graduate and go into pre-med. He is unceremoniously dumped by his whorish girlfriend Fiona on graduation day. Among the people he turns to in his hour of despair is his German pen pal, Mike. Scott and Mike seem to have a special connection. After Mike makes advances to Scott now that he and Fiona are not seeing each other, Scott abruptly sends Mike a message saying he never wants to hear from him again. However, Scott learns shorty thereafter that Mike is actually a beautiful girl named Mieke. By this time, Mieke has blocked his messages. Thinking that Mieke is actually who he was meant to be with, Scott, impulsively for a change, decides to go to Berlin to be with her. Along for the ride is Scott's best friend, the girl crazy Cooper Harris. They manage only to get a flight into London...

Isaac Knott is a public radio reporter in New York, in a wheelchair since an auto accident in which his parents died. He's on the rebound from a relationship when he gets a tip about people who want to be disabled, who offer money to interns to cut off a limb. He searches out a group of these wannabes, but none will talk to him. Then he meets his tipster, Fiona Ankany, an art conservator, attractive and attracted to him. She discloses her desire to be disabled, to be in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, Isaac tries on a pair of wing-tips, spectators, that restore feeling to his feet. What are the connections? What's Fiona's quid pro quo? Will Isaac get his story?

Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent, student at M.I.T. in Boston who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine with the desire to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 for the four to five years of schooling as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor Micky Rosa into a small but secretive club of five. Students Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa of the skill of card counting at blackjack. Intrigued by the desire to make money, Ben joins his new friends on secret weekend trips to Las Vegas where, using their skills of code talk and hand signals, they have Ben make hundreds of thousands of dollars in winning blackjack at casino after casino. Ben only wants to make enough money for the tuition to Harvard and then back out...