2m, 2f November, 1978. Wade Minnick, 16, is a slender, effeminate bookworm in suburban Miami. With his distracted mother out playing Bridge, and his pilot father away on a trip, Wade settles down in the family's showpiece living room to read A Passage To India. His volatile brother Chip, 17, takes off on a dubious errand, leaving Wade alone with Chip's foxy pothead girlfriend. "Freak" Tammy teaches "brain" Wade more about life and about himself than he could learn from a dozen novels. And when Chip returns, having scored and snorted some serious drugs, Wade's gonna need every ounce of his newfound courage and compassion.