Larry Sole is a teenager from Tłįcho who lives with his father in a fictitious town called Fort Simmer. They used to live together in Fort Rae, but have recently moved. Larry meets a friend in the neighborhood called Johnny Beck, and he falls in love with a girl named Juliet Hope.
When Larry discovers that Johnny and Juliet are already an item, he decides that even though he is jealous and frustrated, that he will stay friends with Johnny, because he likes him and because it might be nice to finally have someone to talk to. Johnny's life is everything Larry wants for himself.
One day, Larry and Johnny are talking in the deep way friends sometimes do, when they start to open up with one another, and Larry tells Johnny a little about his life. Larry says that his father raped him often, especially when they lived alone together in Fort Rae. He tells of the emotional abuse as well, and the psychological pain of loneliness.
