Twelve-year-old Ellie Tremont is b-o-r-e-d, bored, and she wishes something, anything, would happen. So when 14-year-old Tommy Bowers moves in next door, with his lanky swagger and his troubled past, Ellie knows her summer is about to get interesting. When Tommy suggests they start a camp for the kids on their street under their elderly neighbors(the Watsons) porch, Ellie quickly agrees to that, and everything else Tommy suggests. And when Tommy gives her a diamond necklace that he says he bought, shes suspicious, though smitten. But by the time her parents forbid her from seeing him, shes given him her heart. Soon, though, Tommy goes too far and even Ellie isnt sure what to make of him.