Cyrus was just a baby when his firefighter dad found him abandoned on the steps of the firehouse. Now he's entering middle school, and Cyrus isn't a record-breaking football star like his dad, or brave like the firefighters who helped raise him. Instead, he's as skittish as the stray dog who turns up on the same firehouse steps eleven years later, parks his head on Cyrus's shoulder, and earns the perfect name, Parker. Except Cyrus's dad says Parker would only be a distraction, a distraction that Cyrus desperately wants: from book reports, from football tryouts, and even from his two best friends, who are starting to act like jerks. Cyrus feels as out of place as the stray dog who captured his heart. But if fitting in means pretending to be someone he's not, maybe this is the year Cyrus can decide to be his own kind of normal, and there's nothing braver than that.