Gene and Finny are best friends and roommates, attending a prep boarding school in New England in 1942. Finny, a natural athlete, is charming and popular, while Gene is a very serious top student at the school. However, when Gene becomes convinced that Finny is trying to sabotage his grades in an attempt to beat him at school, a rift forms between them that only deepens with time. The result of this divide is a tragedy that changes all the boys at the school, and shocks them out of their last innocent days of adolescence.