John is a teenager growing up in Perrysville, Ohio who has fallen in with a group of teenage drug dealers—Dustin, his girlfriend Vickie, and the youngest, Morga—and their boss-guardian, Uncle Reggie. Uncle Reggie, the King of Ashland County, feeds and clothes the teens as they deal for him, haphazardly attend school, and spend their time watching Vampire Diaries on the couch in Reggie’s doublewide. One day, Uncle Reggie returns from a road trip to California with a skinny teenage boy, Cian, and instructs the teens to make sure their new guest doesn’t leave the house.  After John, Vickie, Dustin and Morga interrogate him about his stay, Cian reveals that he’s a selkie, a mythical Norse human-seal, and that he can’t leave until he retrieves his skin—which Uncle Reggie has stolen from him. As John spends more time with Cian, he develops a growing, but repressed, attraction to him. The two hang out, smoking, on Uncle Reggie’s couch and begin to talk openly about the sex-and-drugs lifestyle at Reggie’s. It becomes clear that Reggie regularly has non-consensual sex with Vickie, and Cian asks John if this bothers him. John, in denial of the abusive situation he finds himself in, says that it’s no “massive tragedy” when women have sex with people they don’t want to. When Cian asks if this happens with boys, too, John reveals that he is a virgin and leaves the doublewide in embarrassment.  When John returns to the mobile home one day, he discovers Uncle Reggie raping Cian. As a result, John begins to rethink Reggie’s relationships to the teens, questioning if the sex was consensual and involved anyone else in the home. He walks into the woods to open up Reggie’s secret lockbox, which contains a pistol, cash, and—to John’s surprise—Cian’s missing skin. Waiting to get Cian alone, John tells the selkie that he can help him get his skin back—in return for taking Morga back to California, so that she can lead a different life. The two retrieve Cian’s skin from the box, and as Cian wraps his skin around him, they kiss. Uncle Reggie confronts them, furious about John’s betrayal, and attacks Cian. John, grabbing the pistol, holds Uncle Reggie at gunpoint until Cian escapes with Morga—the two stand off in the snow for an hour before Uncle Reggie spits in the February snow and walks back into the doublewide. John details Reggie’s sentencing to prison, his housemates’ escapes and unclear resolutions, and his own stay in Perrysville, where he continues a smaller drug business out of the old doublewide.