What is the theme of this book and why?

The novel's central theme, Moving Beyond the Past, is primarily illustrated through the experiences and stories of its two central characters, Armpit and Kaira. In terms of Armpit, the story makes it clear right from Chapter 1 that Armpit is determined to put his past (i.e. his criminal history, his stay in a juvenile correction facility) behind him and live a new, positive, productive life. The story not only shows him making efforts to do so, but also portrays the reasoning behind those efforts - specifically his realization, following a frank conversation with a counselor at the correctional facility, that he has to make changes in "small steps", taking one such step at a time.

What's interesting about Armpit is how he doesn't always find it easy to do so, getting caught up in Armpit's undeniably criminal scalping scheme, then in lies to cover up that scheme, then in violence that results from those lies. In building on the idea of improving life by taking small steps, in fact, it could be argued that Armpit, throughout the narrative, is taking two steps forward and one step back - having a goal and taking action, but then being drawn back into the old ways, the old perspectives, and the old values.

In Kaira's case, meanwhile, she doesn't have quite the same troubled past as Armpit, but she does have a similar desire to move beyond her troubled present (i.e. dominated financially, creatively, and personally by her stepfather/manager) into a better, more productive, more self-supporting future.

By contrast to the journeys and experiences of both Armpit and Kaira, there is the character of X-Ray who, in his apparent determination to define his present and his future in terms that are themselves defined by his past, is both a defining contrast to Armpit and Kaira and an embodiment of one of the book's important secondary themes - the allure of money.