Will Halpin has left deaf school to be mainstreamed into his local high school. He is made to sit into the corner so that he can best read the lips of teachers and students, though the teachers either keep turning away or sport bushy beards. On the bus he sits in the first row, revealing the pecking order as going up as you walk back to those who don't even have to ride the bus but have their own cars. Being overweight, bullied and a social outcast, he mostly spends time in his head and writing down his thoughts in his ever present notebook and they are hilarious. When Devon, the other outcast tries to befriend him, he tries to stay away, but when the popular jock is killed during a class trip to the Happy Memories coal mine, Devon, a Hardy Boys fanatic, persuades him to team up to solve the mystery.