Fourteen-year-old Suzette LeBlanc moves into the Sanford Naval Academy in Florida when her dad becomes its Commandant. Walking through the school lobby, she feels like something on a specimen slide in biology class. It doesn't help that she's nearsighted and refuses to wear her ugly glasses.

Suzette struggles to fit in with the older, more sophisticated midshipmen as well as the girls in the Catholic high school she attends across town. In between the pranks—from a riotous cast of charactersand the prom, she's invited to join the cheerleading squad and finds a friend in the squad captain, Debbie. Life looks good until a local girl becomes pregnant and a midshipman is believed to be responsible. That's when Suzette must turn to her parents to save the school from retribution.

Will she be in time?