The Blackhole Kids (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781771839518)

After the death of his best friend, Benji, Bastion must cope with surviving within a radical punk counterculture while navigating addiction, loss, mental illness, and self-acceptance. The Blackhole Kids follows Bastion as he struggles with his grief and attempts to find solace through musical therapy via clubs, basements parties, train stations, and sidewalk surfing. When Bastion is approached by Alex, the frontman of Benji's old band Sick Sad World, Bastion's chaotic life becomes entangled in the lives of the other blackhole kids populating a crowded dilapidated squat. As the stale beer and harsh chemical highs lose their thrill, Bastion fights for sobriety. He helplessly loses friends and lovers to the underlying, and often psychological, rot consuming their subculture.