High school sweethearts Jeremy and China are in love — so in love, in fact, that they decide to spend their senior spring break together on an intimate camping trip.

Due to some failures of packing, Jeremy and China have sex without contraceptives. China ends up pregnant, but refuses to terminate the pregnancy out of fear and humiliation.

The pair go off on their separate ways to college, keeping the secret between them. When China's water breaks, Jeremy rents out a motel room and helps deliver the baby. She tells him to "get rid of it," and he complies, throwing the baby in the dumpster. He then returns China to her college dorm, and drives back to his own campus.

Jeremy wakes, that night, to police standing over his bed; China's roommate was forced to call an ambulance for her, and the authorities discovered the dead baby while putting the pieces of her situation together.

Jeremy and China are jailed while they await bail. They convince each other that the baby was dead when they discarded it, though the police claim it died of blunt force trauma and exposure to the elements.

Eventually, China's lawyer decides to have her testify against Jeremy. Jeremy learns, with horror, that China plans to claim she never saw the baby and thought she had miscarried, pinning the murder entirely on him.