But then I saw it and it was exactly what I had imagined before searching pictures online.  None of the trailers looked new like they did on the website.  They were all old, tattered and some of them were completely boarded up.  When I walked past them, they stank like people or animals had died in there and someone figured they’d rather nail planks to the windows than clean it up.  I couldn’t believe I had the audacity to judge a house with a sunken porch on the way over.  That place was luxury compared to this.  The floor here was just dirt and gravel and random piles of cement blocks.  There were rusty wires hanging loose from phone poles.  They dangled at me like they wanted to touch my shoulder.

Ten seconds in, I wanted to turn and run.  I couldn’t do it.  I actually hadn’t imagined it would be this bad.  I told myself that it might actually be interesting and I could maybe feel freer, like I didn’t have to worry about what the other kids and parents would be saying all the time.  Three years removed from high school and the Mercer crowd was still so interconnected that everyone still knew everyone’s business.  I knew Theo Spencer had transferred schools, everyone knew that Callum had been hired out of his internship, they all rolled their eyes at the fact that I went to FIT.  The only bright side I could think of leaving New York was leaving those snooty-ass people.

But I missed them the second I saw my new neighbors.  There were so many of them outside their trailers doing nothing and they all stared at me.  Every last one of them.  I reeked of being different and they sized me up in their lawn chairs.  A lady with a toothless smile flat-out pointed at me and hacked a laugh while smoking.  Everything felt different to the point of being bizarre.  No one thought twice of watching me and even following a bit so they could gawk and squint for longer.  The adults wore less clothes than I’d ever seen adults wear in public and the kids ran around half to fully naked.

I jumped when someone tickled the back of my palm to get my attention.  I turned to see a rail-thin stranger with a scraggly beard who laughed, said I was from Hollywood and then asked if I had a cigarette.  When I said I didn’t, he took me in from head to toe and muttered like it was a threat, “You’re too pretty, girl.”

He and a friend followed three steps behind me for a good minute till I swallowed my pride and started running to Trish’s home.

By the time I got there, I prayed she’d see me, cry my name and throw her arms around me with the kind of hug every mom knew how to give her scared baby.  But she wasn’t even there.

“She went for beers.”

I turned to see a sweaty, shirtless boy sitting in the passenger seat of the truck parked across from Trish’s trailer.  He had the door open and a leg dangling out.  It had a big, shitty tattoo of a giant squid down the calf.  The only part that was done right was the shiny, massive eye just staring at me.  I know it took too long for me to look away.

“You must be Lake.”

I looked up at him and nodded.  The first thing I noticed was the crazy Einstein hair.  He’d be handsome without it.  Next were his green eyes at least ten times lighter than mine.  So light they were unsettling, almost scary in contrast to his skin.  It was tanned dark and a little red.  I could see a tan line peeking out the low hang of his shorts and it told me that his natural skin color was paper white.  He had to spend all day in the sun.  “Yeah,” I finally said, processing him.  “You must be Hunt.”

He hopped out of the truck and pulled the shorts up on his narrow hips as he came to me.  “Yeah.  Come on.  I’ll help you with your shit.”

Helping me with my shit involved taking my bag while I rolled the suitcase and tossing it onto a chair once we got into the trailer.  It was bigger than I thought it would be with two full bedrooms but it was messy and cramped.  Some walls were chipped, grey and unpainted but then others were lime green out of nowhere.  There were crushed cans of Keystone Light in every direction, on every surface.

“That’s her cleaning for you,” Hunt said.

I turned to him and saw the wry, crooked smile on his lips.  I gave as much a look of amusement as I could muster and took irrational comfort in the fact that he had a sense of humor I could relate to for at least that second.  It was the first thing to make me feel even a hair more comfortable since I got in.  He tossed me a can of beer from a cooler but went ten minutes or so before talking again.

“Hey, man,” he said.  I turned to him.  I laughed a little on the inside.  I was pretty sure no one had ever called me “man” before.  “I know you didn’t want to come back here.  I wish you didn’t have to.  I’m sorry about what they put you through.  Both of them.  But she…” Hunt winced, like talking sucked and he hated ever having to do it.  “Trish is just trying to get us away and then when she does, she’s going to make it right.  She can get mean but she’s a good person.  He...” Hunt made a face and rubbed the back of his neck.  I knew he was struggling to say something about his dad.  Dean, who had beaten someone with a bat and put him in a coma.  The one who had Trish scared all the time.  I had been sending her the money so she could save up and escape him but every time we almost reached the mark, something happened.  The first time, she said she needed enough money to bring Hunt.  The second time, she said Dean found the wad of cash she hoarded and went ballistic.  The third time, there was a leak to fix.  There were tons of excuses but after awhile, I was just sending her money so she’d leave me alone for a couple months.  I hated being out with my friends, laughing, having a good time when suddenly, a pang of anxiety shrunk my ribs, squeezed my heart.  I know I went pale sometimes because Dara liked to point it out.  I hated thinking about Trish, dreaded her contact.  But the one time I blocked her on Facebook, she emailed my school address.  She started to get volatile after that one, latching onto the idea that I thought I was better than her, despite the fact that she made me.

I started full on hating her by the time I was at FIT.  I quit Facebook by then and lied that I wasn’t going to college.  I said Caroline had no money because of the divorce and I had to work.  But Trish always found a way to contact me and somehow remind me, if I was acting distant, that she knew my nice rich lady’s address.  And since she did know where Caroline lived, I just tried to keep her happy and quiet however I could, realizing that it was my fault for even opening up the Pandora’s box in high school, and being grateful that Trish sometimes gave me up to four months between contact.

But things went haywire when she found out I was in college.  She was furious and her logic pinballed everywhere.  I was wasting the Pike’s money, I should be giving her the money, I was having the time of my life while she was trying to run for hers.  She said I could probably afford to give her more money than I was sending.  Some of it was meant to appease Dean, after all, so he’d be nicer.  But most of it was for her savings to run way.  She accused me of using my funds to date and drink and have sex when I should be donating every penny I could to her cause.  Dean was getting worse and worse and I was just letting her suffer through it because I thought I was better, that only I deserved a good life.  Every email grew more hysterical and they started coming with more frequency, so desperate and unhinged that after every one, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Worse, I couldn’t unload it all on Callum and let him comfort me in the way only he could.  I’d hidden Trish and my stupidity from him for so long that I was afraid of how he’d react if I finally told him and he finally realized the crazy I’d let into my life.  Our lives.  At the points that I truly couldn’t handle the stress without feeling like I might die, I’d call Callum and, under the guise of being late on an assignment or being the worst sewer in class, would have him comfort me.  It helped to hear his voice and sometimes, on that fire escape, see his face.  But of course, we were never talking about the same thing because he never knew.  I was lying to him so hard and I felt like complete shit about it.  But thanks to him and friends and the fact that I lived in a city packed with twenty-four-hour distraction, I survived every email.