Thirteen-year-old Charles Siskin is not like other boys. He doesn't like sports, he reads all the time and by the time he is ready to enter high school, he doesn't have a single friend. But it is more than these things that separate him from kids his own age. Set apart from everyone by his odd disposition and what his schoolmates see as a distinctly feminine way of speaking and walking, he has become an outcast. To get away from the daily torments of his peers, he talks his parents into letting him attend St. Ignatius Loyola High School, an all boys, military private school. He quickly discovers that he has removed himself from one bad situation, only to find himself in an even worse one. But when he auditions for the spring play, he sets into motion a series of events that lead to a crushing and humiliating catastrophe.