Steve "Hate" Bason is an alienated suburban Arizona teenager with a major attitude problem. Stealing an idling car as a whim, Hate is caught and sent to a juvenile detention center. After his release, tensions at home boil over, with Hate embittered by his parents' divorce and his alcoholic father's inability to straighten his life. Sneaking out at night, Hate rides his motorcycle to a vacant lot. While shooting out lightbulbs on a billboard with an illegal handgun, he witnesses an older man trying to rape a teenage girl. Hate shoots the man and, believing he's dead, escapes with the girl, Cindy. On the lam, they stop at a roadside diner, where Cindy leaves her handbag. A motorcycle cop retrieves it and chases after them, but Hate mistakenly believes his arrest is imminent and fatally shoots the cop. Hate and Cindy escape into the desert, where they are sheltered by a wise-ass Native American, but eventually confront their situation and the deadly consequences which await them.