Sheila, a blonde teenager, hitches a ride with a suburban housewife and her baby, but they only go a few feet before her car gets a flat. While the woman calls from a phone booth for help, a wild dog attacks the baby before Sheila can stop it. Ethan rides his Big Wheel, a plastic tricycle, outside a typical Southern California suburban home. Inside, Evan, his brother, stares at the TV while his mother brings in the groceries. She’s late and in a surly mood. She pulls a vodka bottle out of the oven and accuses her son of drinking. He denies it. She tells him he’s lazy like his no-good father and slaps him. Later, he throws his clothes into a trash bag and he tells Ethan that he is leaving because life will be easier for their mother if there’s only one child to look after. He promises to stay in touch. Evan follows a pack of homeless kids to an underground punk club. As the singer growls out the music, a teenager insults a girl in the crowd. He and other bystanders tear away her clothes. The singer and the club manager see what’s going on and stop the performance. The crowd throws her clothes back to her as they file out of the club. Evan collapses stoned on the dance floor because someone slipped drugs into his drink. The club bouncer deposits him semi-conscious on the grass outside. Jack spies him as he pulls up in a beat up Ford sedan. Evan goes for a ride with Jack, who tells him he lives with other runaways in a T.R. house, a county-owned abandoned home for “the rejected” near the 605 Freeway. Jack says he’ll take him there but first they will stop and pick up a friend, Joe Schmo, who can’t stand being around his homosexual father and father’s lover. As they get closer to the T.R. house, Jack tells them that the pack of wild dogs they see are the offspring of domestic pets that mated with coyotes. They ride until they get to a dilapidated 1960s-style ranch house filled with litter, graffiti, vermin, rodents and other runaways. Evan stays, getting a T.R. initiation tattoo, i.e. a burn, which stands for “the rejected.” Joe hitches his way back home, sees his father asleep naked with his lover on the floor, turns around and goes back to the T.R. house. Sheila hears him in the kitchen and watches while he gives himself a burn. The runaways are awakened by the sound of gunshots outside. Local vigilantes in cars are shooting the wild dogs for target practice. Razzle, a wiry kid who is the biggest pet lover of the gang, runs out to save his dogs with another punk Skinner. They get into a confrontation with the vigilantes but it breaks up when the police show up. The men tell the officers that their aim is to get rid of the dog that recently killed a little boy. The vigilantes insinuate that they are doing the job that the police should be doing. The officers tell the men to leave and ignore the vigilantes’ suggestion to check out the T.R. house because Officer Rennard is Jack’s stepfather and he knows what’s going on there. Jack, Skinner and Evan go “grocery shopping” by raiding garage refrigerators in affluent neighborhoods and spray painting “T.R.” on the refrigerator door before they leave. At a second house, an owner catches them stealing food. Evan sprays the man with a fire extinguisher so that they can escape. In a typical evening, the runaways eat dinner, swap stories about their miserable childhoods, drink beer, kid around and watch T.V. Evan sees his mother’s drunken driving accident on the nightly news and brings his little brother Ethan to the house to become one of the T.R. At night, at an urban picnic at a Radio Shack store with a window full of TVs, Sheila tells Joe that the scars on her back are from the beatings her father used to give her after he touched her but stopped short of incest. Another night of punk club fun turns ugly when Skinner leaves after a fistfight. A couple of hostile teenagers pick a fight with him on someone’s lawn. Other T.R. kids run to help him but the homeowner breaks it up with a shotgun. The gang goes back to the club. The hostile teenagers return to the punk club looking for the T.R. kids. One of them pulls a knife and stabs a club security guard by mistake when he intercedes. The gang makes a hasty exit before the police can question them. The next day, the T.R. kids go to a convenience store to buy some beer. The storeowner is uncomfortable with punks in the store, and tells them not to return. They make fun of his limp and pour a blue slushee into a jar of hardboiled eggs. They leave the store laughing. At that moment, the vigilantes pull up and hear the storeowner gripe about the T.R. kids. Later, the vigilantes attend a town meeting and hear many locals complain that the punks are responsible for the neighborhood mayhem. Rennard defends the punks but the neighborhood doesn’t think the police are doing enough to control the runaways. After the meeting, Rennard visits Jack at the T.R. house to warn the gang that tempers are running hot. Nobody’s interested in what Rennard has to say until he gives them money. He wants them to leave the T.R. house until the rage blows over but most of the kids have nowhere to go. He warns them to stay out of trouble because a lot of people have guns and will use them. The vigilantes show up at the T.R. house looking for trouble. They grab Sheila, rip her nightshirt off and parade her nude body in front of the other punks. It’s the last straw for Sheila. She steals dope from Keith, the group pothead, and commits suicide. Skinner discovers her body the next day. Joe reads her suicide note out loud. They can’t call the police or the coroner to dispose of Sheila’s body or the group will be blamed for her death. The group decides to take the body home to Sheila’s family. Sheila’s father answers the door but barely reacts when he learns that his daughter is dead. The gang shows up to the funeral service but Sheila’s mother wants them to leave. A fight breaks out when Sheila’s father insists that the kids leave, blaming his daughter’s death on friends like them. Joe’s response is to reveal that the real reason Sheila is dead is because her father molested her. Sheila’s father ends up in the hospital and Rennard warns Jack and the gang that people will come looking for them. The only chance they have to stay alive is to leave the T.R. house. At a strip club, the vigilantes make plans to attack the T.R. kids. Razzle lets his dogs out of their cage to attack the two vigilantes walking toward the house with a shotgun. One vigilante loses his footing and drops his gun. More T.R. kids attack and overpower the intruders. When one escapes to the car, Jack pummels the second man. As the first vigilante attempts to drive away, Skinner climbs through the open sunroof. The first vigilante stops the car and two girls throw dirt in his eyes, giving Jack a chance to hit him like a punching bag. He escapes a second time, picks up his friend and they drive away. The kids think that they’re gone for good but they turn around and gun the car directly toward the kids. The crowd scatters but Ethan at rest on his Big Wheel is not fast enough. He is hit and his bloody body slams up against the windshield of the vigilante car. The vigilantes drive off, leaving Ethan’s dead body to fall to the ground. Evan rocks and hugs his brother’s lifeless body, crying with his head buried in his brother’s chest as a patrol car pulls up.