Eighteen

Teenage Pip Anders has run away from his upper middle class home to live on the streets in no longer being able to deal with what he considers his father Earl Anders' hypocritical form of tough "love", the latest tough love incident, which Pip did nothing to stop, leading to the accidental death of Pip's brother, David Anders. In trying to survive on the streets, he meets a handful of people with who he ends up having complicated relationships in his inability to get over his anger about life, he largely using each for his own benefit in the process: gay hustler and go-go boy Clark; food bank worker and aspiring social worker Jenny Stevens; and priest Father Chris. On Pip's eighteenth birthday, Earl is able to locate him, not to encourage him to come home, but solely to hand over a gift from Pip's long deceased paternal grandfather, Jason Anders, who Pip never met, the gift which Jason had always intended to mark this specific milestone. The gift is not the portable tape cassette player Pip originally believes it to be and which he tries to pawn, but rather the message on the inserted cassette. The message describes Jason's own experiences in WWII when he himself was eighteen. It isn't until he gets to the end of the message that Pip gets a better understanding about his life: with his parents especially his father, and with his new "friends".