For Keeps?
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, Darcy, editor at her high school paper, and her long-term boyfriend Stan are in their final year of high school and already have been accepted at good colleges; before Darcy goes to the University of Wisconsin to study journalism, she will go on a trip to Paris with her mother for her graduation present, while Stan will go to Caltech to study architecture. With the help of Darcy's best friend Lila, Darcy and Stan spend a weekend together, where they sleep together, and Darcy becomes pregnant. They announce the news at Thanksgiving, and neither Darcy's mother Donna, who was abandoned by her husband and brought up Darcy alone, nor Stan's Catholic parents are very supportive. Respectively, they urge the young couple to have an abortion or give up the baby for adoption. Darcy plans to have an abortion, but does not go through with it, much to Stan's relief.
At Christmas, the kids announce their plans to keep the baby, causing a break between them and their parents. They rent a decrepit apartment and get married to the cheers of their friends, despite the fact that without parental consent the marriage is not legal. At the urging of her high school guidance counselor, who explains that other girls will want to emulate her and become teenaged mothers themselves, Darcy drops out of high school but works toward her GED. Prom is interrupted by Darcy's water breaking; although baby Thea (short for Theodosia) is healthy, Darcy suffers from post-partum depression, unable to even hold her daughter, and Stan struggles to pay the bills on a part-time job salary. Only when Darcy hears an intruder (who turns out to be Stan's father) and picks up her baby protectively, does she break from her depression.
Without telling Darcy, Stan sacrifices his Caltech scholarship because there is no married housing at the school for undergraduates. Although Stan takes a second, dead-end job, the bills pile up, and the couple finally moves in with Donna, which alienates Stan and Darcy, and causes Stan to start drinking heavily. Local neighborhood girl Michaela informs Darcy of the scholarship deception so she enlists Stan's best friend Chris in a plan to ensure he take the scholarship and go to college after all. The plan entails throwing out Stan and annulling the marriage. Stan reconciles with his parents, but is heartbroken over the split with Darcy, who doesn't change her mind but becomes visibly angrily at her mother's cold attitude.
At Darcy's night school graduation, Stan arrives to inform Darcy that he has applied for scholarships to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for them both. Darcy lets slip her role in the Caltech deception with Chris, and Stan chases after her as she drives away. Darcy finally tells Donna that Stan is a good man, that she loves him and Donna can either embrace them as an entire family or watch them live their lives without her; Donna finally gets over her past and says she loves and supports Darcy fully. They reconcile, go forward on their plans to attend college in Madison in the fall, and remark Thea will have a very early curfew when she is a teenager. Stan says ten p.m. and Darcy says eleven p.m. Then they say if she is really in love her curfew will be eight p.m.
romantic