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1
ETHAN “SHEP” SHEPHERD
The longer Istared at the house across the water, the more I began to dream of another life—one where I had a chance with the man who lived there.
The idea was stupid, but here I was, sitting on the broken stone fence that separated my home from Cider Mill Creek—which then divided us fromthe other side—thinking about what could’ve been.
I took a drag off my joint, inhaling the smoke until my lungs burned. Every morning I waited to see him. Hoped for it.
Why was my obsession stupid? Because of where I lived—welived.
There were five vital rules to living in the Lakeview Trailer Park, a not so nice sprawl of trailers northeast of New Gothenburg. We were at the ass end of the suburbs, almost in the country. I grew up learning the rules of survival the hard way, and they were ones I wouldn’t ever forget.
Rule one: Don’t shit where you eat.
It was simple. If you had plans to sell drugs or rob someone, you didn’t do it in the trailer park. Nearly everyone living in this dump had a side hustle, and we all did it outside of the gates.
We were surrounded by loaded motherfuckers, who’d tried for years to get the park bulldozed to build condos, but the owner refused to sell the lakeside location for the mere satisfaction of seeing their disgusted, rich faces. He hated lots of things, but nothing more than people who had more money than him. Having rich assholes as neighbors meant we could sell our shit to them as they whined about how bored they were. They snorted blow while screaming about the druggy scum in the trailer park. A simple promise of a good time, and they bought a handful of uppers for double the price anyone reasonable would pay.
I took another deep drag and watched as two women meandered on the other side of the river, probably off to church or some shit, and when they glanced at me, I flipped them the middle finger. I imagined them letting out a gasp because they walked faster.
Rule two: Don’t bring the cops to the park.
Whether you were fucking them or you were doing something illegal, if you brought cops in our gates, you would find yourself out on your ass. It was a no-brainer. A lot of people living in the trailers didn’t sit on the right side of the law, and we didn’t want the police sniffing around.
I watched the smoke that I’d exhaled through my nose billow in the air. Now that I was nineteen I seriously didn’t need to get into trouble with the cops. I wouldn’t be going to juvie. No, it would be actual prison for me with the guys my brother had been locked up with.
Rule three: Don’t be a rat.
If you were a rat, you would end up poisoned or caught in a trap. Trust me, no one wanted that.
Rulefour:Keepdramatoyourself.
If you had a problem with another tenant, no one gave a shit. If you started issues which resulted in rule two being broken, then you wouldn’t be living here long. One time a guy, who called himself Skulls, slept with another man’s wife. The men started a brawl in the park. The cops came within ten minutes. We suspected the rich assholes kept an eye out, hoping for a reason to force the park to close. After the morons were released from custody, they came home to find their belongings thrown out on the patchy brown lawn in front of their trailers. They were no longer welcome.
I stared atthehouse again as the door opened, but it wasn’t the guy I’d been waiting for. His mother walked outside to sweep the one step that led up into their home, and after a moment of using the broom to get rid of the red leaves, she went back inside again. I grunted and took another long drag, letting the smoke burn my lungs.
The last rule was the most important of all. The rule that defined everything.
Rule five: No gay shit.
Ever since I was a kid, my brother warned me to bury my true self. The man who owned this place was an asshole who hated anyone different from him. My brother was the only one who knew who I was and taught me to hide it from the world. Gay men didn’t survive in this trailer park, he’d said—I believed him. Leo had always taken care of me. Our father died in a work accident when we were kids, and Mom skipped town a few years later. No one cared that Leo was a fifteen-year-old taking care of his eight-year-old brother, as long as he paid the rent.
And he did.
My brother was my hero.
Now, I lived by his example. Leo might be gone, but I wouldn’t forget what he’d taught me.
“Yo, Shep! Look at that rich fuck.” Murph took a drag from his joint, rocking on the fence where he sat beside me while pointing across the river.
Murph was one of the few “friends” I had in this place, but I couldn’t say I liked him. Or that we were actually friends. He was scraggly, with a gaunt face, sunken eyes, and unwashed thin blond hair that fell around the base of his neck. But it wasn’t his looks that were the issue, rather his fucked-up attitude and superiority complex. Anyone would think he lived in a palace rather than a junkyard version of a trailer park.
The guy he jabbed his finger at lived on the other side of the river and happened to be the same man I’d waited to see, and I hadn’t even noticed him exit the house. Every morning he walked out of his quaint family home, with its white picket fence and the mailbox out front where Snoopy lay on top, and then he headed for high school.
I knew more than I should about him.
His name was Jonas Nomikos, and he was eighteen years old, one year younger than me. He was in his senior year at Cider Mill High School. His parents were conservative Methodists, who protested at the township meetings about our trailer park’s existence near theirsafeneighborhood. In other words, I was sure he hated anyone from our part of the woods.
