Who wants to be the same as everyone else? You don't want to be ordinary, do you? At 18, Tom escapes ordinariness in small town Australia for Melbourne and a flat in a strange block named Cairo. There he meets the magnetic Max Cheever, and is drawn into his circle of bohemian artists and dreamers. Liberating him from the bourgeois aspirations of university, they fill his world with affection, passion, opinion and a feeling of belonging he never had before. But all is not as idyllic as it seems. Max is prepared to break all the rules to live freely, and soon Tom is ensnared in his plot to steal a million dollar Picasso masterpiece. Among undependable forgers and violent art dealers, Tom trusts only in Max - even as he falls hopelessly in love with his beautiful wife. For in all the lessons he learns this summer, the greatest one will be to identify what is real - from what is fake.