The body of a missing student is buried in the woods. But only a few know this. At first, it was just a running joke in the hallways of Northwoods High, a lowbrow school in a lower brow town. Finn Sexton never really thought the joke was funny, but his friends couldn't get enough of it. The punchline? New kid, Levi Brightly is gay . Levi is used to being laughed at. A side effect of being the only out queer kid at school. But he draws the line at becoming the volleyball team's personal punching bag, especially since he wants to join the team. After threatening to report Finn's friends to the principal, Finn steps in as Captain and offers Levi a deal in exchange for his silence. He'll watch his back on and off court, and Levi will keep his mouth shut. Except keeping his end of the deal turns out harder than expected, and when the joke goes too far at a party, the worst happens. Suddenly, there's a dead body and no one alive willing to take one for the team.

At first glance, nobody would be able to tell that Nathaniel Jean had a problem. Or second glance, or third, or fourth. After all, he had everything. He was a captain of his school's soccer team and one of the top players in the state. He had a big house and money to spend. He had family, he had friends, he had fun, he had faith. He never meant for it to happen. He never wanted to look at another man in the way he should have been looking at a woman. The idea had disgusted him for most of his life - living in a heavily Catholic town with heavily Catholic parents, homophobia was the only response he knew. That didn't change when he first realized that he didn't like girls. No, Nathaniel Jean was still homophobic. He hated the idea of a man sleeping with another man. He was raised on the notion that all gays went to hell, and he believed it. He despised them, and so he despised himself. Nathaniel Jean was more fortunate than most, because help did arrive for him. Help by the name of Lucas Morgan, they boy he'd always known but never known. The boy with big dreams and bigger talent. The boy that changed Nathaniel's life over the course of their thirty-six week long senior year.