After working a shift at a Jack in the Box restaurant, Jim Nolan packs food into a box and takes it home to his unemployed father, Russell Nolan, and little brother, Kelly Nolan. Russell is sleeping off a drunken bender in the living room, so Jim fixes breakfast for Kelly. Noticing a bruise on Kelly’s face, Jim tells his brother to stay away from their father when he’s drinking, then throws Russell’s nearly empty liquor bottle against a wall. After walking Kelly to school, Jim is late for his high school Spanish class and told by the teacher to get an excused absence pass. Meanwhile, Russell applies for a sales job, hoping it will set things right, but he loses his nerve and leaves before being called into the hiring office. At school, Jim tells his counselor he wants out of Spanish class, but the counselor says he waited too late in the year to drop it. During a later class, Jim daydreams about going back into the counselor’s office and dumping all the files and papers on the floor. Jim also remembers being slapped by his father several years earlier when he was Kelly’s age. Afterward, Jim runs into Lisa, a girl he likes, but he feels awkward with her. He imagines kissing Lisa, and remembers that when he invited her to his apartment to meet Kelly, his father came home drunk and shamed him into ending the relationship. During football practice, Jim sees Jan, a cheerleader, sitting with her girlfriends in the stands, and remembers making love with her at a drunken party after a football game. Jan waits for Jim after practice, but he avoids her and tells his brother, who is also the team mascot, to meet him at their special grove of trees in a nearby park. There, he tells Kelly about how Jan is chasing him, but he wants Lisa. While roughhousing with Kelly, Jim remembers when Russell used to play with him, and wonders why his father abuses his brother. That evening, Jim snaps at Kelly for being lackadaisical about failing a spelling test, but later apologizes. When Russell comes home drunk, Jim confronts him about not being interested in Kelly’s progress at school. As Jim tries to interest their father in Kelly's aptitude for art, Russell remains unresponsive. Finally, Jim asks why Russell treats his younger son so badly, and Russell confesses that Kelly is not his biological son. After a football rally the next day, Jan asks Jim why he is so moody and evasive. During the Friday night football game, Jim runs for a touchdown, but the team loses. Jan waits for Jim outside the locker room to go to a party, but he walks away from her. Jan bitterly curses him and his manhood. At home, Kelly gives Jim a plaster trophy he made in art class; it says, “World’s greatest football player.” In the morning, Jim awakens to the sounds of Russell hurting Kelly in the kitchen and tells his father to get out of the house. As Russell packs his clothes, he tells Jim he just wanted Kelly to listen. After Russell leaves, Jim and Kelly go for a ride in Jim’s old car, but it breaks down on a highway near the beach. Kelly runs toward the dunes and Jim follows. Near the ocean, they find a man lying next to an upended hang-glider and rouse him. Introducing himself as O. D. Silengsly, the man straps Jim into the glider and shows him how to launch himself from the dune and fly. Later, as the brothers sit on the beach, Jim tells Kelly that it is “just you and me now,” and promises that Russell will not be coming back. When Kelly asks why their father hates him so much, Jim explains that his personality changed after their mother left. Jim remembers how Russell used to play with him and the neighborhood children, and that he and Russell were best friends in those days. Meanwhile, Russell sits in a bar, telling the bartender that he will see his son the next day about returning home, but a voice laughs at him for allowing his son to throw him out of his own apartment. Before Jim goes to Jack in the Box the next day, he tells Kelly to come by for supper at five o’clock, but Kelly never arrives. Jim runs home and finds Kelly lying on the floor, beaten to death. Jim trashes the apartment and throws his father’s furniture out the window. Armed with a butcher knife, he goes to his father’s favorite bar, but Russell hides in a nearby empty building. Finally, Russell calls home, apologizes, and tells Jim where to find him. Jim confronts his father, but instead of stabbing him, he throws him to the ground and runs. Sitting in his car, Jim hallucinates until he falls asleep, but his head is clear when he awakens in the morning. Jim drives to a nearby park where his father used to take him. He watches a boy Kelly’s age shoot baskets, and gives him a ride home. As Jim drops the boy off, they agree that maybe they can shoot hoops together sometime. Jim drives away.