Jerry is a freshman attending an all-boys Catholic high school called Trinity while coping with depressive feelings and existential questions that stem largely from his mother's recent death and his father's enduring grief.

Vice-principal Brother Leon has recently become acting headmaster and overextends his rising ambition by committing Trinity to selling double the previous year's amount of chocolates during an annual fundraising event, quietly enlisting the support of Archie Costello, the genesis and leader behind The Vigils: the school's cruelly manipulative secret society of student pranksters.

from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," feels strangely determined to sell nothing even after the ten days have passed, thus estranging himself from both Leon and The Vigils.

At first, Jerry's refusal to cooperate with the corrupt school culture and fundraiser is seen by many classmates as heroic, but the gesture threatens Brother Leon and The Vigils' ability to coerce the student population.

Leon presses Archie to put The Vigils' full force behind the chocolate sales, so they set up Jerry as an enemy for the rest of the student body to harass through bullying, prank calls, and vandalism.

Though Archie is apprehended as the mastermind of the fight, Brother Leon intervenes on his behalf and privately praises his efforts in the unprecedented success of the chocolate sales.

"[4] The New York Times Book Review declared "Mr. Cormier is almost unique in his powerful integration of the personal, political and moral"[5] and The Australian wrote that young readers "recognised his vision as authentic and admired his willingness to tell things as they are".