OCD, the Dude, and Me

13-year-old Danielle Levine witnesses her best friend Emily's violent gun death. Four years later she's a bright but emotionally shut down loner with wild red hair and an outrageous fashion sense navigating OCD, body-image issues, over-protective adoptive parents, and her senior year at a private San Fernando Valley high school for neurodivergent students. She wants nothing more than to get the year over with and graduate ASAP. But when she suffers a panic attack in front of her unrequited-crush Jacob and a profanity-laced meltdown in response to public shaming by the mother of classmate queen-bee Heather, school psychologist Marv requires Danielle to attend an off-campus social-skills class to graduate. There, she meets Daniel, a recently relocated rebel from another high school who idolizes the Dude from the Coen Brother's movie The Big Lebowski and is drawn to him despite herself. He steps in to be her "boyfriend" at a school dance, takes her to a New Year's Eve Lebowski fest, and acts as her long-distance wingman during her devastating school trip to New York. Throughout, Daniel models the power of the Dude's Zen-like philosophy of abidance, while Danielle's beautiful fashion-designer Forever Aunt Joyce gently encourages her to be confident, and her progressively revealing therapy sessions with Marv trigger memories of her lost friend Emily. Ultimately, Daniel trusts Danielle enough to come out to her as gay. But her trust in him is tested when, after she is publicly humiliated by a drunk Jacob, Daniel reveals something that forces her to either confess and confront her long-suppressed guilt over Emily's death or sacrifice their friendship.