She's twelve years old and she's desperately in love with the fourteen-year-old boy who lives next door. He knows her as his best friend, but he's too preoccupied with his own travails to return her affection. Since his mother went missing three years previously, his father has become ever more violent and abusive. Now, each act of violence pulls him further and further from Dorry's loving embrace, and she'll do anything to save him.