On a shimmery summer day, eleven-year-old Ben watches his too tall, bird-crazy best friend, Ring, wade into the river. Everyone else is laughing and talking on the riverbank, paying no mind. Ring turns and gives them all one last look -- and disappears.

Day after agonizing day, Ben waits for news of his friend. In the meantime, he tries to sort out a jumble of thoughts and memories so he can get things straight in his head about Ring. From his outlandish stories to his evasiveness about his background, Ring has been a mystery from the first. But friends like Ring -- the kind who instinctively understand you -- don't come along every day, and Ben isn't about to give up on him...especially after he starts to do some investigating of his own. But if Ben dares to consider that Ring might not have drowned, new questions arise. For if Ring is still alive, where is he? And why did he leave in the first place?

Lillian Eige's story of two boys who are desperate to trust each other, but are almost too scared to dare to, will leave you aglow with the strength of what a boy will do to protect the people he cares most about.