Alice and Louise are sisters united by a distant tragedy - the house fire their brother died in and the disappearance of their mother immediately afterwards.Fourteen years later, that day still affects everything they do. Alice teaches dirt-poor students in a school the government wants to close - when she's not pursuing a relationship with a married man. Louise, a fantascist and recovering heroin addict, has never stopped playing the game of dares - the danger game - she invented as a child. As Alice fights to save her school and Louise struggles with her self-destructive urges, the sisters come together in Melbourne to unravel the truth about their brother's death and follow the dangerous trail of their missing mother.