about the book

Hildie Vasquez, age 16, is on the street in East Vancouver, thrown out by her Uncle Norm who imagined she was on the make for his partner David. She ends up accused of the murder of one of the people in the house where she has been squatting. Refusing Uncle Norm's expensive, high-level lawyer, she accepts the help of Nick Carmichael, a young legal aid attorney who helped her out once before. She even refuses Uncle Norm's apology and invitation to her to return home.

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What will Hildie do with the anger that is bottled up inside of her? She encounters the police again when she tries to defend one of her East-side friends from Steve, a pimp she knows is dangerous, the man she believes is the real murderer of their friend in the squatter's house. Steve promises to make her regret her interference, and throughout the story she knows he’s watching her.  
 
The truth is, no one knows what is wrong with Hildie. She is furious with the mistreatment of her friends on the street, partly because she knows what exclusion is. After her mother's murder in El Salvador back in the late 80's, when she came to live with Uncle Norm, she attended a school for wealthy girls where her lack of the proper social conditioning and her peasant background left her isolated from all but a few students.

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We follow Hildie through the maze of a distressed teen on the street, in detention, in foster care and group home, as she struggles to identify what is happening inside her, before her emotions get so out of control that she does something irreversible, something from which she can never come back.