On her first day of high school, fifteen-year-old Melrose Bird sees Alex Weber's mother on a park bench staring at Drift High School where her teenage son died five years ago.

Alex's death has never been discussed in the town or at the school. But Mel and her best friend Frank become obsessed with Alex's grave and consumed by the why of his suicide. When Mel happens upon a pair of Alex's cargo pants, she takes them. And what she finds inside the pockets brings into focus the story of Alex's brief life and his death.

Determined to pressure the school and the town into recognizing why Alex died, Mel confronts a world of adult secrecy and deception. Even her own peers are giving her trouble. Mel's assertion of her identity — her buzz cut and the pants she wears — is met with condemnation from her classmates.

But anyone who thinks Mel Bird will retreat from disapproval or opposition is badly mistaken.

THE SIDE DOOR is an affecting story about a couple of Superman-loving kids who discover that it's by revealing their secret identities that they come into their true super powers. - Alison Bechdel