The principal of a prestigious prep school, who is also an old friend of William's, asks for his help with a troubled student: a talented basketball player who is now "speedballing" heroin and prescription drugs. William and his team encounter resistance from the boy's blue-collar father, while the young man, in the throes of addiction, steals from a nursing home patient and engages in increasingly reckless behavior. William realizes that this young man, reeling from his mother's suicide, is determined not only to feed his addiction, but to die.
