Stan is an intense sixteen-year-old loner who desperately wants to make the junior varsity basketball team. And it seems that he may be about to do so, until he's blindsided by the unexpected attentions of Janine Igwash. Suddenly Stan is no longer thinking about jump shots. Instead he is obsessed with Janine's spiky hair, her milky white shoulders and the mysterious little tattoo at the base of her neck, not to mention the heat of her breath, her dark eyes, wide hips and . . . Sometimes Stan's imagination runs so wild he wonders whether he might be going crazy. That would be par for the course given his home life. His mother is dating the feckless Gary, and his little sister, designated gifted but a holy terror, is acting out. Then Stan's father arrives on the scene with Stan's four-year-old half brother, and things become truly insane.