| Director | Peter Horton |
|---|---|
| Budget | $10 million |
| Box office | $2.6 million |
Erik is a thirteen-year-old loner who has just moved to a small town in Stillwater, Minnesota. Accompanying Erik is his newly divorced, emotionally abusive and neglectful workaholic mother, Gail. Erik and his eleven-year-old neighbor Dexter, who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion, become good friends despite initial mutual dislike and their differences, as Erik seeks the familial relationships he grew up without in Dexter and his mother Linda. Erik hides the friendship from his mother, knowing that she won't approve due to her own prejudice regarding AIDS.
Gail discovers the friendship one night after Linda comes over to ask Erik about something Dexter ate in the boys' quest to find a natural cure for his disease. She furiously warns Linda to keep Dexter away, but Linda encourages the friendship. When the boys read an article in a tabloid about a doctor in distant New Orleans who claims to have found a cure for AIDS, they set out on their own down the Mississippi River with the hope of finding a means of saving Dexter's life.
The boys take a boat down the river with a group of unkind adults who mistreat the pair. Eventually the boys steal their money and try to hitchhike the rest of the way. When the boatmen find out their money has been stolen, they locate the kids at a bus station and proceed to chase them until they reach a dead end of a dilapidated building. Erik draws a switchblade and one of the men draws a knife. Dexter suddenly grabs the knife from Erik and cuts his own hand. He threatens the boatman with his blood, saying that he has AIDS and could easily transfer the disease to him through the man's open wounds. This scares the men off. Dexter then realizes what he has done by directly exposing his blood to the outside environment. He suddenly feels sick, so Erik escorts him back to the bus station. Realizing that their journey must end if Dexter is to be treated, Erik resorts to calling Linda to have her pick the boys up when they reach Stillwater by bus.
Once they return, Dexter spends the rest of his time in the hospital. As his relationship with his mother has grown increasingly strained, Erik goes to stay with Linda who lets him visit Dexter. The boys joke and prank the doctors three times that Dexter has died, but when a third doctor arrives to check on him, Dexter has died for real. While driving Erik home, Linda notices a mother holding her young child while crossing the street. Reminded of her own son, she pulls over and breaks down crying. Erik apologizes to her, saying that he should have tried harder to find a cure. Linda, taken aback by his comment, embraces Erik, explaining that he was the happiest thing in Dexter's difficult life. Upon their arrival at home, a furious Gail confronts the pair. When Gail starts to hit Erik, Linda quickly intervenes, angrily and tearfully informs her of Dexter's death, and demands that she allow Erik to attend the funeral and never hit him again and threatens to kill her. Gail guiltily complies.
At Dexter's funeral, Erik places one of his shoes in the coffin and takes one of Dexter's to let sail down the river. This pays homage to an earlier moment in their trip when Dexter, who was having nightmares, was given one of Erik's sneakers to hold as a reminder that he's always by his side.