In 1911 Florence gets her first car ride in a Model T her dad buys from a door-to-door car salesman. In Montana in 1930, Helen travels to her one-room school on horseback. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Johnny is bussed to integrate a white school, leaving a neighborhood where "nobody's a stranger unless you make them a stranger." In New York, Victoria goes to Woodstock at 12. In the 1980s Nicole plays Ms. Pac Man at a video arcade. On September 11, Aalaa wakes up to a new world in Michigan and resolves to show her Americanism another way.