C.K., a man on death row for killing his child lover, and Johnnie, now a psychiatrist, relive their childhood friendship. Both were victims of a child pornography cult that operated out of their day-care centre in 1983. They are single children of two very different sets of parents and just happen, in mid-childhood, to become neighbours in rural Indiana. One boy relishes some of the day-care memories; the other has repressed everything, but his occasional flashbacks unsettle his best friend. A third boy, an interloper who is still involved with the perpetrators, instils rivalry among the two, but this anguish binds C.K. and Johnnie even further. The voluptuous Cross-Eyed Ladonna and an older bi-sexual neighbour create confusion and guilt as the two boys grapple with themselves as sexual beings. Love, laughter, perceptiveness, and wanting to do the right thing entwine the two boys in deepening friendship.