In an unspecified time and location, an unnamed boy is living what he feels to be an idyllic life in the faded and peeling lido where his father is a lifeguard. He idolises his father – never more so than when he saves the life of a suicidal man. The arrest of his sister Lilly later that summer brings the halcyon days to an abrupt end, however, and his family is torn apart, with Lilly sent to jail and the boy set to a boarding house for dysfunctional boys: The Fell. He is young and afraid, but he and his new friends band together against their enemies – until anger spills over when he hears the girl he loves referred to as a twenty-dollar whore, and his actions lead him to run from The Fell. And keep running…