Franky Winter has long been best friends with his high school classmate, Ballas Kohl, much like their parents, Carly and Ray Winter and Angie and Nic Kohl, have been friends. Ray though is now the odd person out since the recent divorce when he realized he was in love with a man, his current partner Brendan. Franky and Ballas are among the popular group of students, and are on the school swim team together, Ballas being the team captain. While Ballas has just started a sexual relationship with Jessica, Franky in turn could have his choice of any girl - at least according to the scuttlebutt provided to him by his friend Mouse, a boy trapped in a girl's body, from what she overhears in the girls' washroom. But Franky has chosen to date Cil (Priscilla), they planning to have their first sexual encounter the night of his seventeenth birthday party. Franky's first was almost Ballas' younger sister, Tash, who has just returned to school following "the incident" for which she is now labeled a slut and she is now sneaking alcohol to cope. When Franky and Cil's planned post-party sexual encounter falls through at the last minute, Franky and Ballas end up having a drunken bros' night out after the party, which leads to the start of a sexual encounter between the two of them. Word of this encounter begins to circulate among their classmates. Franky is painted as the gay one and is shunned by his so-called friends, including Cil and Ballas, because of it. In the process, Franky not only has to address his own sexual feelings in their entirety, but also the homophobia he displays against his father, with whom Franky chooses not to have much of a relationship.

Mean Dreams is a thriller about a fifteen-year-old boy who steals a bag of drug money and runs away with the girl he loves while her corrupt cop father hunts them down. This coming-of-age fable brings together the desperation of life on the run and the beauty and wonder of first love.