A hit-and-run accident threatens the happiness of two teenage borthers and exposes deeper mysteries. An unnamed sixteen-year-old's account of events begins on a snowy evening after his brother Kyle brawls with a classmate, Duane, over Duane's tsister, the beautiful Emily. The two basketball stars make apparent amends, and Duane offers the brothers a ride home from a party. Drunk and still fuming at Kyle, Duane drives recklessly to scare his passengers. Duane hits someone on the road and then leaves Kyle, the narrator, and the victim's body to freeze while he speeds away. The next day, the narrator and Kyle must face Duane's powerful father. The man hated the boys' father when the two adults were in high school, and he hates Kyle for dating Emily. The brothers learn that the abandonment by their father after their mother's drath is only the tip of their father's mysterious history and only a sliver of What Happened.