Having broken curfew, Lux and her sisters are punished by a paranoid Mrs. Lisbon by being taken out of school and confined to the house indefinitely. Isolated and increasingly depressed, the sisters contact the boys across the street by using light signals and sharing records over the telephone to express their emotions. During this time, Lux rebels against her parents and becomes overtly promiscuous, having anonymous sexual encounters on the roof of her house late at night; the neighborhood boys spy from across the street. After months of confinement, the sisters begin to leave notes outside for the boys. The girls eventually send a final note to the boys asking them to come over at midnight, ostensibly to escape from their house.