Spitfire: a pseudo culture war love story.

Seventeen-year-old Ivy, an East-Sider from city-gone-to-pot Times Beach, knows what it is to be a loser. A published writer turned high school dropout, her only friend is Panda, a belligerent homeless leech on the run from a work camp for girls called The Agency. Deserted by her family, Ivy’s dinners consist mainly of dented and expired cans of potted meat from the dumpster behind the Polish Deli on Third. Her clothing is occasionally from the same dumpster.

So why, when West-Side gangs of teenage boys scorch East-Siders (and vice-versa) in a pseudo culture war, would the police find a small piece of paper in the back pocket of one of the West-Side Fire Setters, recently beaten and put into a vegetative state, with Ivy’s East-Side address, her name, and the word SAVE in the upper right-hand corner?