Chappie, the precociously wise narrator of Rule of the Bone, is a punked-out teenager living in an upstate New York trailer park with his mother and abusive stepfather. Almost accidentally he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he drifts through crash pads, doper squats, and malls.

With his best friend, Russ, he gets a crossed-bone tattoo on his arm and takes the name "Bone," inventing and claiming for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider.