The novel is set in Sutherland Shire in the 1970s. Deb and Sue are thirteen-year-old high-school students whose lives are about male surfers, panel vans, straight-leg Levis, skipping school, getting wasted and fitting in. The girls strive to become "surfie chicks", the groupies that hang around the surfer-boy gangs of southern Sydney. Adhering to rules that prevent them from eating or going to the toilet in the surfers' presence, the girls manage to become members of the most prestigious gang, and are assigned boyfriends, but to the boys they are just sexual objects. After Deb suffers a surprise miscarriage, and the introduction of heroin takes its toll on their social group, the girls finally become disillusioned with the sexism and narrow-mindedness
