Jake has felt fatherless ever since his parents separated, and so he can't wait to spend the summer with his dad. But the house Dad rented is a shabby place next to the railroad tracks, with no friends and nothing to do. Then, through a pickup game of hoops, Jake befriends a neighbor boy. Adrian is charming at first, but soon Jake starts to sense a streak of desperation in him. Jake gets sucked into Adrian's bizarre life, in which recklessness escalates to danger. Witnessing Adrian's highly dysfunctional, sometimes violent, family gives Jake new perspective on his own situation.