As Beaver is in that phase of change called early puberty where he is no longer a child but is not yet a man, his family has no idea what activity he is partaking in that is causing him to be consistently late from school. What he has been doing is pining over Donna Yeager, just watching her walk down the street as she passes him every day, he not saying a word to her. At a carnival, Beaver ends up winning a $20 14-karat gold locket. After Wally convinces Beaver to give the locket to their mother, Beaver, on Gilbert's suggestion, decides to give it to Donna instead, inserting photographs of her and him inside. Donna ends up loving the locket. But Beaver, who had no idea of the implications of such an expensive gift, has to figure what to do when those implications surface, or what he believes the actual actions of those implications mean.
—Huggo