It is the first day of school, 1989, and seventeen-year-old Veronica Sawyer is frustrated with the hellish competitive social hierarchy at Westerburg High School, where nerds and underclassmen are pushed around by brutish, idiot jocks like Ram Sweeney and Kurt Kelly. After trying to defend her best friend, the cheerful, overweight Martha Dunnstock (cruelly renamed "Martha Dumptruck" by the uncreative Kurt), Veronica longs for the days of elementary school when life was simple and everyone was friends. She wishes desperately to be above the drama, but there is only one elite clique who can do that: the Heathers, the three most beautiful, most popular girls in school. They are the weak-willed head cheerleader Heather McNamara; the bulimic, personality-lacking yearbook committee chair Heather Duke; and the "mythic b queen" of the school, Heather Chandler. When Veronica uses her talents as a forger to get the Heathers out of detention, Chandler recognizes her potential and gives her a make-over, elevating her to a member of their inner circle
