As in classic fairy tales, no one here has functional parents. Allegra's father is dying in the hospital while her mother sits at home staring at the TV, resentful and withdrawn. It's no wonder she suffers from the stereotypical teenage ailment of roadkill-low self-esteem, and to makes matters worse, her oafish boyfriend (an effective and funny Zach Robidas) is primed to dump her.
Joe responds to Allegra as to no other member of the staff, but their fractured friendship is no occasion for a heartwarming tale of personal growth and lessons sweetly learned; Szymkowicz is far too perceptive and subtle for such after-school-special tripe. When Allegra's supervisor at the home calls her a natural — "Are you sure you've never done this before?" — the phoniness of the adult world is made plain to her; we feel her disillusionment at discovering the emptiness at the heart of things.
Thanks to the film Rain Man and various books, the autistic savant has become a fixture in popular culture. He's an easy tragic figure because he shares so much with us "normals" yet can't be one of us. But Szymkowicz doesn't use Joe (ably portrayed by Brian Pracht) as a disposable needle for injecting self-awareness lessons into our heroine. Joe is a solid character, even a tragic figure in his own right. Just like Allegra and Suzy, he's insecure and fragile, and lacks useful parental figures. Just like them, he's treated unfairly by a world that professes to care but doesn't understand him. And just like them he makes us laugh at unexpected moments.
While Joe's fate darkens, the girls hit the road and fall victim to Marco, an icily charismatic thief who comes to their "rescue" when the road trip sours. Yet we're never more than a step away from the light. Not the light of redemption, exactly, but the light that emanates from the uncomplicated power of beauty. Anything pretty, Marco philosophizes creepily, must be "wrong." But in the end a wiser Allegra insists, albeit in a small voice, that it's not so.
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