When eight year old Oscar Madly finds out that his parents are getting divorced, he retreats into a fantasy world filled with happy memories of times with his father and tries to cope with his loneliness through conversations with his talking pet hamster, Buffy. One night, Oscar stumbles upon a group of teenage boys attacking another for being gay, with the damage by a metal pole being so great that the boy will be permanently paralyzed. Oscar would frequently escape to the treehouse his father built for him in order to be alone.