Seventeen-year-old Maya is a Fragile-someone deemed too weak to function in society -and has spent the last decade institutionalized at the Academy for the Rehabilitation of Children. Maya wants nothing more than to be cured of her neurotic hypersensitivity which causes her to experience the pain and emotions of others. Instead, she begins to have vivid nightmares where she connects with a young girl's trauma, leading her to uncover a plot to destroy the empathy centers in children's brains.

Desperate to escape the girl's pain, Maya learns she can transfer feelings into people with her hands when she accidentally hurts her best friend, Jacob. Lacking faith in her new ability, Maya must choose between fighting a man bent on destroying everyone like her, and finally being free from the burden of empathy.

In doing so, she might discover that she's not so fragile after all.