When Daniel Musgrove's troubled family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, he is appalled. On top of the usual teenage humiliations, he now has to learn to say "y'all" and "Co-Cola" or risk being ostracized as a Yankee. But Daniel's loneliness fades when he meets fellow outsider Tim Cousins. You only need one best friend, Daniel figures, to make it through high school alive.Daniel and Tim immediately become inseparable, sharing a fascination with ridicule, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. The boys learn algebra from a teacher whose mind may be slipping off the tracks. They join the cast of a bouncy evangelical musical called Christ! (think Mary Magdalene singing "I'm Not That Kind of Girl"). They take their dates to the prom in matching Sky Blue tuxedos and kiss them in Tim's father's Buick to "Nights in White Satin."But then things start to go terribly wrong. The friends' feud with Red Martin, star linebacker and school bully, gets out of hand. They commit a small crime that grows larger and larger, and threatens to engulf the whole town. Arnita, the first black prom queen in the history of the school, is injured and wakes up a different person. And Daniel and Tim and their families are swept up in a shocking chain of events. Read Less