Twelve-year-old Paul, who lives in the shadow of his football hero brother Erik, fights for the right to play soccer despite his near blindness and slowly begins to remember the incident that damaged his eyesight.

Roberta Ritter has been waiting for a knight in shining armor for most of her humdrum life. She's a doormat, a nobody whose mother died a few years back, a smart girl who wastes her afternoons working in a failing arcade in a failing shopping mall. And then a Crusader arrives.... Only this Crusader is a virtual reality war game, one that does a booming business at the arcade, despite-or perhaps because of-the controversy over its racism and violence. Roberta's...