Trailer Trash
Authors: Marie Sexton
Riptide Publishing
PO Box 1537
Burnsville, NC 28714
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Trailer Trash
Copyright © 2016 by Marie Sexton
Cover art: Jay Aheer,
jayscoversbydesign.com
Editor: May Peterson
Layout: L.C. Chase,
lcchase.com/design.htm
“Future Shock” is copyright of
Newsweek
, November 24, 1986.
“Fact, Theory and Myth on the Spread of AIDS” is copyright
The New York Times
. February 15, 1987.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at
Riptidepublishing.com
, or at
[email protected]
.
ISBN: 978-1-62649-395-7
First edition
March, 2016
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-396-4
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It’s 1986, and what should have been the greatest summer of Nate Bradford’s life goes sour when his parents suddenly divorce. Now, instead of spending his senior year in his hometown of Austin, Texas, he’s living with his father in Warren, Wyoming, population 2,833 (and Nate thinks that might be a generous estimate). There’s no swimming pool, no tennis team, no mall—not even any MTV. The entire school’s smaller than his graduating class back home, and in a town where the top teen pastimes are sex and drugs, Nate just doesn’t fit in.
Then Nate meets Cody Lawrence. Cody’s dirt-poor, from a broken family, and definitely lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Nate’s dad says Cody’s bad news. The other kids say he’s trash. But Nate knows Cody’s a good kid who’s been dealt a lousy hand. In fact, he’s beginning to think his feelings for Cody go beyond friendship.
Admitting he might be gay is hard enough, but between small-town prejudices and the growing AIDS epidemic dominating the headlines, a town like Warren, Wyoming, is no place for two young men to fall in love.
For all the people who kept nagging me until I finally finished this one: Heidi, especially, but also Rowan, Troy, Rob, and Wendy.
Cody was at the gas station on the corner, waiting for the customers to clear out so he could buy a pack of smokes, when the new guy came in. Warren, Wyoming, was a small place. Everyone knew everybody else. This kid obviously wasn’t from the area, and Cody stopped browsing the
Rolling Stone
magazine in his hand to check him out.
He was seventeen or eighteen years old, just like Cody, but dressed like a preppy boy from one of those John Hughes films—deck shoes, pegged jeans, and a golf shirt with the collar turned up. He probably had hairspray in his hair, for fuck’s sake.
There were two possibilities: the first, and most likely, was that he was just another schmuck who’d tried to take a county road shortcut from I-80 to Yellowstone and had stopped for directions. The second was that he’d just moved into town.
Cody watched, intrigued, as the stranger walked right up to the counter, cocky as could be, and asked Vera for a pack of Marlboro Reds. She glanced around the station like Cody knew she would, noting the other shoppers—Tammy, with her bawling kid; old Jerry, who was apparently searching for the perfect packet of beef jerky; and Lucy, wearing her house slippers. Then she turned to the new guy. She smacked her gum once and said, “You got an ID, kid?”
“Of course.” But he didn’t reach for his wallet.
“You gonna show it to me?”
Cody couldn’t see the boy’s face, but he didn’t need to.
“No cigarettes unless you’re eighteen.”
“Oh,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Okay. Thanks.”
The newcomer started studying the gum display next to the counter. Ms. Thomas, the music teacher from the high school, came in then, and Cody gave it up for a lost cause and left the store. Ms. Thomas and Vera didn’t like each other too much, but they made a good show of it any chance they got. They’d be yacking for ages.
Cody leaned against the side of the building and pulled out a cigarette. The wind was blowing like it always did, and he had to go behind the big ICE cooler to get it lit. When he looked up again, the preppy boy was standing there, watching him. The wind blew his blond hair into his eyes. He pushed it off his forehead and said, “Hey, man, can I bum one of those?”
Cody only had two left. Still, saying no felt like an asshole move. “Sure.”
He shook one loose from the pack and offered his lighter. When it was lit, the new kid leaned against the ice machine. He was a bit taller than Cody. Then again, just about everybody was. “What’s your name?”
“Cody.”
“Cody,” he said, like he was tasting the name. He must have liked it, because he smiled. “My friends call me Nate.”
Did that mean Cody already qualified as a friend? The possibility surprised him.
“Can’t believe she carded me,” Nate went on. “Nobody at home ever cared.”
“Vera doesn’t care either, but she’s worried others do. One of the PTA moms finds out she sells us smokes, and she’s out of a job. You gotta wait till everybody else is gone, then she’ll sell to you, no questions asked. Beer too, once she knows you.”
“And she knows you?”
“Well enough.” His mom’d been sending him there to buy stuff since he was old enough to cross the street.
Nate turned his head, seemingly so his blowing hair would be behind him, but all it did was wrap around the other side and back into his face. “Does the damn wind ever stop blowing around here?”
“Only when it snows.”
“Man. I’ve only seen snow once in my life, and that was enough.”
The statement struck Cody as funny, and he laughed. He figured Nate was just being a smart-ass and doing a piss-poor job, but then he realized maybe not. “You serious?”
“Lived in Texas my whole life. It’d freeze a couple of times a year, but the only snow I ever saw was last year. The entire city had to shut down.”
“We sure as hell don’t shut down for snow around here, I can tell you that. Did you just move here?”
“Last week.”
It was odd timing. With the oil and coal booms over, more people were moving out of Wyoming than were moving in. “Where do you live?”
Nate gestured to the northeast. “Up in Orange Grove.”
Orange Grove
. That figured. Orange Grove was Warren’s rich neighborhood. Never mind that nobody in the history of the world had ever managed to grow any kind of citrus in Wyoming.