Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he's frightened Eli is the young girl who moves in next door She doesn't go to school and never leaves the flat by day She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood