Rounding Home

Justin Mills wants to play professional baseball. He gets one step closer to his goal when he returns home from college and earns a spot on a minor league farm team. Justin also meets Katey, the cutest girl in town. Life has gotten pretty good for a small-town boy. His best friend, Wes, visits Justin at the ball field to congratulate him and deliver a belated birthday card. As the friends race to Wes's house on bicycles, Wes is struck by a car and killed. Justin, who was losing the race, comes upon his friend lying in a pool of blood. This horrific event sends Justin into an emotional coma - he cannot cope with the loss. Now an emotional zombie, Justin receives more bad news: his parents, Rick and Jan Mills, are getting a divorce because his father has fallen for a woman half his age. After being unable to express his love to Katey, his beautiful young girlfriend, Justin learns that she has become pregnant. Justin attempts to cope with these additional life hurdles, but his detachment causes him to make all the wrong decisions. He quits playing baseball, goes to work for his father full-time selling used cars, and hastily asks Katey to marry him. Katey refuses, saying that she doesn't want Justin to marry her for all the wrong reasons. With his life crumbling around him, Justin breaks down and decides to finally open the birthday card from his deceased best friend. Its contents set Justin free of his emotional prison and enable him to continue on his journey through life, truly alive once again. —Jeff McLaughlin