Foxfire meets The Outsiders in this story of friendship between 1960s girls, including girls from different sides of the tracks. Protagonist Evie acts and dresses like a greaser, but with her sober and loving mother and grandmother, she has a more stable home life than most of her friends. Diane is a soc, or in Bad Girls parlance, a "tea sipper," but she and her sweater sets have just moved to the bad side of town to live with a drunken aunt. Evie encounters Diane at a concession stand, where it becomes clear that Diane is no more popular with the tea sippers than Evie and her friends are. Evie stands up to the mean girls and later that night, Diane returns the favor. 

At 15, Evie is the youngest of the group, but the other girls see that Evie has something special in her. They just don't know what yet. They're tough girls. Evie observes

This is a story about hardness in young women, and about their care for one another, and about how soft the baddest girls are inside.