How It All Goes Down
Fraternal twins and lifelong besties Jude and Noah Sweetwine have been more or less the same person for most of their lives. At 14-ish, they're entering puberty and beginning to drift apart. That drift is one part one part hormonal and a zillion parts insane sibling rivalry. As they gear up to apply to a super competitive art school, they fight for the attention of their mother, Dianna.
Without really realizing it, Noah and Jude are leading mirror lives. Noah publicly celebrates his identity as an artist and secretly obsesses over the neighborhood hottie, Brian. Jude is upfront about being boy-crazy, but shy about her art, which she never shows to anyone. (Noah spies on her, though.)
Hogging his mother's attention, Noah does everything he can to prevent Dianna from finding out about Jude's awesome art. In retaliation, Jude rigs a party game so that she spends Seven Minutes in the Closet with Brian. Nothing happens, but Noah doesn't know that until Brian (a boarding-school kid) comes home for winter break and plants one right on his lips.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her family, Dianna has a lot going on. She and her husband Benjamin haven't been getting along, so she's started an affair with a local sculptor, Guillermo Garcia (exotic, huh?). Noah notices that she's been acting a bit strange, but it's still a shock to him and his sister when Dianna announces her separation from their father.
All these secrets, rifts, and petty aggressions come to a head on one doozy of a rainy day. Well, back up the truck—technically, the chaos begins one day before, when Dianna walks in on Noah and Brian wanking off together. Noah is rightfully horrified (because it was intrusive) and wrongly embarrassed (because he's gay). Brian freaks out and pulls the plug on their romance because he's a closet case.
Okay. Back to Doozy Day. Noah spots his mom kissing Guillermo in the park. He runs away, totally freaking out, when he sees Brian, who's with a girl that he's clearly just hooked up with. He screams out that Brian's gay and immediately regrets it. Too late: their friendship or romance or whatever it was is officially in the toilet.
Mom tells Noah that she loves Guillermo and plans to divorce his dad. This leads to a major argument, after which she drives off to meet with G. On the way, she gets into a fatal car accident. And right as her mother loses control of her car, Jude is having sex for the first time. Um, it doesn't go well. (She never quite defines it as rape, but the situation is definitely shady.) To make matters way worse, when she gets home, she learns that her mother has died.
Yeah. Yikes.
In the aftermath of Dianna's death, everyone does stupid, awful things. Noah goes to yell at Guillermo and lies that his parents were planning to get back together. Jude throws Noah's application to art school in the garbage instead of putting it in the mail. Under the impression that his application was rejected, Noah decides he's done being Noah. He quits his life, cuts his hair, and tries to act "normal"…except for the Lost Connections Internet posts he keeps leaving for Brian. Bless his heart.
Coping with the traumas of her mom's death and her shady sexual experience, Jude's sort of done being Jude, too. She cuts her hair (must be a symbol) and starts dressing in lumpy sweatshirts instead of form-fitting dresses. She and her brother barely talk, and their dad isn't doing so hot either. Jude's in art school now, but basically flunking out. Convinced that her dead mother is breaking her sculptures (!), she seeks out a local artist who works in stone. (You guessed it: Guillermo Garcia.) She wants to make something that Dianna can't break.
Guillermo starts mentoring Jude, with each of them unaware of the other's connection to Dianna. Meanwhile, Jude strikes up a sorta relationship with Oscar, the British bad boy who's like a son to Guillermo. Oscar's a flirt, but he's not one for commitment...and anyway, Jude's sworn off boys. She's somehow convinced herself that having sex is what caused her mother's death.
Yeah. Double yikes.
As Jude works through her issues through her art, she realizes she's got to come clean with Noah and the art school about her treachery. Meanwhile, Noah has found out about her apprenticeship with Guillermo. He worries that Jude will discover that Dianna's death was "his fault." Terrified, he gets wasted and nearly jumps off a cliff during a drinking game with friends. Jude and Oscar come to his rescue.
After that, all the secrets come tumbling out. Noah tells Jude about their mother's affair. Jude and Guillermo figure out they're both connected to Dianna. He's freaked at first, but ultimately wants to continue his work with Jude. Jude and Noah patch things up immediately, then go home and have a heart-to-heart with their father, who's also feeling much better. Yay.
From there, it's happy endings all the way down. Oscar and Jude decide they're basically in love even though they've only known each other for, like, two days. Noah is accepted into art school and wins back Brian, who's out of the closet now. Mr. Sweetwine buys a houseboat and goes on a date. Despite all the hurtful stuff that's gone down, it seems like everyone's ready to move forward.