Alex is the clowning trouble-maker in the classroom, and outside it. He appears to be bent on self-destruction as he continually baits the senior boys at his school, who are then forced to go through the rituals of toilet dunking to put him in his place. His only friend is his next-door neighbour, Marta, a girl whose life of church, and loving, if strict, family is in contrast to Alex’s lonely one with his hard-working, distant father. The routines of Alex’s school and home life are sharply interrupted when an older boy, the Jockey, reappears in Alex’s life as both a saviour and a threat. He challenges the younger Alex to sleep rough in the city for one night, surviving only on his wits. Alex is ambivalent about the Jockey’s motives: he has been in a juvenile detention centre for robbing Alex’s father’s electrical goods shop. Does he really want to show Alex how to survive, be tough, or is there another agenda, a far more sinister one?
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