cohen-bramwell

After dropping out of high school and getting kicked out of the house, a disenfranchised teen moves in with Gina, an underage sex-worker and the teen’s only friend. While intitially a refuge from the judgement of the outside world, Gina’s house becomes yet another prison in the endless desert that entraps them. Throughout their time living together, they are sucked deeper and deeper into the quicksand of addiction, eventually finding themselves totally isolated. The other kids they used to party with have moved on. Their families won’t speak to them unless they clean up their acts. All they have left is each other and the vaguest outline of a plan. One day they’ll move somewhere where there’s water and trees. The only other people they encounter with any regularity are Gina’s clients, who include Officer Krum of the Fernley Police Department, amongst other supposedly upstanding citizens. They are kept afloat by their dream of a lighter life, in a landscape as different as could be from the arid expanse in which they’ve (mis)spent their youths, and the unrelenting hope that the grass really is greener and they’re just a few lucky breaks away from a one-way ticket out of this town. This work of fiction in verse explores alienation, addiction, the necessity of dreams, and the enduring power of friendship to get you through your darkest times.