- Jack and his mom move into a boarding house in Seattle. They take walking tours of the neighborhood and look at houses to live in that they can't possibly afford.
- Jack reads a lot and compares their room to a setting from cheap detective stories.
- Two other women live in the boardinghouse: a single mother-to-be named Kathy, and an enormous housekeeper named Marian. Marian thinks that Jack needs more discipline. Naturally, she's not his favorite person in the world.
- Jack makes friends with Terry Silver and Terry Taylor, two other boys with single moms.
- The three of them raise all kinds of hell: stealing stuff and playing Nazi using an armband Terry Silver made.
- Jack hangs out with them because the boardinghouse owner, Phil, has bad burn scars and doesn't like kids staring at him
- They call people who they think are Jewish and scream at them in fake German.
- When not furthering the cause of Anti-Semitism, they watch The Mickey Mouse Club and lust after Annette. Jack writes inappropriate letters to Annette. He gets form letters back, which come to a stop the more he tries to impress her.
- Jack has fantasies about having a bad accident in front of Annette's house, forcing her to take care of him.
- They also go up on the roof of Silver's apartment building and look for targets to throw things at. One day, they spot a man driving a Thunderbird and pelt him with eggs. He's angry, but he doesn't respond when they throw one last egg at him.
- That makes the boys angry and Silver starts screaming anti-Semitic slurs at the departing car.