At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been-the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes-but someone else altogether.

Over the course of one school year-seventh grade-he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief.

With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.