RE: Trailer Trash, 7 pt 1 (Patreon)

“Ashlee… can we talk about this?” Tabitha tried to muster a hopeful look.

“Talk about this?! I don’t have anything to talk about with you!” Ashlee spat. “I don’t even know who you are!”

Each of Ashlee’s accusations felt like a blow to Tabitha, like this forgotten specter from her distant past had finally found a means to haunt her. It was easy for her to read the outbursts as Ashlee saying my REAL best friend wouldn’t have abandoned me, even when she knew Ashlee was simply failing to recognize her with all of her changes.

“You’re not her,” Ashlee repeated, accepting Tabitha’s silence as tacit confirmation. “You’re not her.”

The young girl’s glare hardened, growing guarded and distant. She wiped the brief tears that had formed and turned to storm out of the room with a resolute set of her jaw.

“Shit,” Tabitha clapped her hands over her face in vexation. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She’s not even unfounded in that basis, Tabitha rationalized to herself as she struggled to meet Ashlee’s gaze. She’s RIGHT to disassociate the current me from that Tabitha. I’m NOT the Tabby she last saw on that trampoline. My memories have an almost fifty-year difference, my body is fifty pounds lighter, puberty seems to be affecting me in a different way, my diet and metabolism and energy and body chemistry are all different. Those are all the SMALL changes—I have so many friends and family now. I’m a different person.

Tabitha had been proud of how much she’d grown in these past six months, how much she’d learned, assumptions she’d overturned and new perspectives gained. Her development since incarnating into her past self had been meteoric, and by contrast Ashlee had of course not changed at all—she’d been left behind and abandoned again, now in an entire additional new context. After seeing the hurt and confusion in Ashlee’s eyes, Tabitha had never found her own impossibly unfair second chance at life so bittersweet.

She’s rightfully angry—and in a lot of ways, Tabitha’s mind raced. She knows me—KNEW me, she isn’t going to buy any excuse I can cook up. I don’t think she’d believe the truth, either. No one would. And, no one will believe Ashlee when she says I’m not me, even though… she’s right. Technically. As if all of this needs to be any more cruel and unfair to her.

“Tabitha?” Mrs. Cribb stepped into the room with a bewildered expression, not even remembering to knock. “What on earth happened?”

“She... became upset,” Tabitha replied with an apologetic expression. “She’s—please don’t hold it against her. She’s been going through so much. And. Well. I’ve changed. Quite a bit. From the girl she remembers me being.”

“She just stomps out here and says you’re not Tabitha,” Mrs. Cribb said with wide eyes. “She sat down out there in the waiting room and now I can’t get her to say anything at all! What happened?!”

“I think she needs some time,” Tabitha pleaded. “Please don’t hold it against her. I know she’s been through a lot.”

“Yes, but—did you say something?” Mrs. Cribb asked. “Are you okay? I’m just completely—I don’t know what to think, where all this came from.”

“I’m okay,” Tabitha said with a weak smile. “Can you make sure she’s okay? And, um, tell her I’m sorry, if I said anything wrong?”

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Cribb nodded, pausing again in the door. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” Tabitha promised again.

“Okay,” Mrs. Cribb murmured. “I’m so sorry about all of this—I don’t know what this is all about.”

“It’s really not her fault,” Tabitha said. “She just… can you give her some time?”

“I will—we will,” Mrs. Cribb fretted. “We’re going to take good care of her. Sorry for disturbing you with all of this today. I was glad to see you seem to be doing so much better! I’ll stop by again in the next week, if they haven’t released you yet by then.”

“Thank you,” Tabitha said. “It was good to see you.”

“Take care, Hun,” Mrs. Cribb said, finally hurrying back down the hallway towards the ward’s reception area.

“Ugggh,” Tabitha let out a noise of exasperation the moment she was sure Mrs. Cribb was well out of earshot. She let herself fall back heavily onto her pillow and covered her face, completely at a loss as to what she should do about Ashlee. “This can’t be happening.”

* * *

“Hey,” Alicia said, standing over the corner table out in the quad Elena had sequestered herself to.

High school as a loner was new to Elena, but wrapping herself in a certain amount of distance from everyone else helped bolster her new goth persona. She wasn’t like Tabitha who’d hidden herself away completely unseen in the library at lunch, because Elena wasn’t intending to be socially invisible. Elena positioned herself on the far outer periphery of everyone else, because that was the statement she wanted to make.

Her present lack of social engagement also may have given her too much time to reflect on such things.

“Hey,” Elena looked up at Alicia with a neutral stare, neither intent on continuing conversation nor inviting the other girl to sit with her.

“Can we talk?” Alicia asked.

“Sure,” Elena said with indifference.

“Okay,” Alicia planted the sketchpad and three ring binder she was holding onto the table and then climbed over the bench to take a seat. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Elena asked.

“I’m serious—are you okay?” Alicia pressed. “Like, are we okay? If this is part of your whole new thing, then fine. That’s fine and cool. I don’t want you to be all upset about the Tabitha thing, if that’s what this is about.”

Elena looked down at the table for a moment, weighing her words and trying to figure out what she wanted to say. After a few strained seconds she looked back up, simply deciding her friend deserved the truth.

“I’m really upset about the Tabitha thing.”

“Okay—thank you,” Alicia sagged slightly, trying to study Elena’s now intentionally difficult to read expression. “You don’t have to believe her. Us. You don’t have to believe us, we said that’s fine. That’s okay. But, can we talk about it, or…?”

“I…” Elena frowned, staring at Alicia and trying to choose her words carefully. “I don’t think there’s anything to talk about? Really?”

“Okay,” Alicia said, casting a nervous glance around and fidgeting with her binder and portfolio. “We don’t have to talk. But, can you listen to me for a bit?”

Elena shifted uncomfortably in the seat opposite her friend, fighting the urge to quibble over how listening to Alicia talk would be them talking, and how she didn’t want to talk about this. With a sigh of frustration and pointed disinterest in her eyes, Elena waved her hand, gesturing for Alicia to get it over with.

“I know time travel’s impossible,” Alicia said. “But, somehow or other, Tabs does know things that she can’t know. About the shooting, about movies that haven’t come out yet, about—stuff. The way future stuff is. I know you don’t believe her and that you’re not gonna be convinced, but can I just like, lay out why I’m convinced, so that things aren’t all weird between us?”

“Okay,” Elena said, a little more coldly than she’d intended.

“Tabitha knew I was an artist on the first day of school,” Alicia began. “Like, she knew beforehand. I had a paper out and I was doodling, not drawing, when she came up to me. Didn’t have my art out, no one had seen it. I went to Fairfield middle, you guys went to Laurel. So, on that first day she’s asking if I draw, wants to see my art, wants to get to know me.”

“What were you doodling?” Elena asked.

“Nothing!” Alicia held her hands up. “Just like, lines. Eyeballs. Shapes. Normal every person does this doodles, not even like effort or skill or anything. Just ordinary bored scribbling. But, she was suspiciously convinced that I was an artist.

“That doesn’t seem suspicious, though,” Elena countered. “What seems like normal doodles to you is probably amazing to the average person. You’re an artist.”

“It’s—no, it’s not even like that,” Alicia said in frustration. “Anyways. I get to know her, she turns out to be different than I first thought. We’re kinda sorta friends then, I guess. She asks if I want to hang out after school so we can talk about drawings and ideas and stuff, I’m like, yeah, cool. The shooting thing happens. I connect it to her looking up first aid and gun shot trauma stuff because she was doing that in the library all the time and that was weird. Suspicious. She tells me about the time travel. I don’t believe her.”

“With you so far,” Elena commented in a deadpan voice.

“Yeah. Well,” Alicia picked at the edge of her portfolio. “I kinda, I dunno, kid her about it over the days after that. ‘Cause I can’t tell how serious she really is about all of it. I happen to bring up how, yeah she must’ve known me in her first life, and ask her about that stuff. She gets like… guilty. She didn’t know me, not even from school. We’d like, never interacted in her first life, I guess, and she only recognized me from me getting famous for my art. Kinda wanted to—well, not take advantage of that, exactly, but wanted to have a sorta partnership sorta thing going on with me. My drawings, her writing. Like that.”

“Okay,” Elena said, her interest starting to pique in spite of herself.

“So I ask her about that, and Tabitha describes a specific piece of unfinished artwork in here,” Alicia slid her portfolio aside and jabbed a finger at the three ring binder. “I’ve never ever shown anybody these ones. No one knows about them, never brought them to school. My parents would freak out on me if they found them— I’ve had them hidden in my room at home. They’ve never left my room. Tabitha tells me, in detail, this specific one that’s super special to me, like it has huge personal significance to me as an artist. As a person. There’s absolutely, completely no fucking way she could’ve known about it.”

“Could’ve been a lucky guess,” Elena shrugged. “Based on—”

“It’s not,” Alicia insisted. “Trust me. It’s not. I’m going to show these to you now, so don’t freak out. Okay? I’ve never shown anyone these. Not art teachers or friends or anyone I know— nobody. Not even Tabitha.”

“Alright,” Elena said, curiosity getting the better of her.

With what could only be described as extreme reluctance, Alicia slowly slid the binder across the table to Elena. Intrigued as to what special secret drawings were so important that Alicia kept them hidden away, Elena opened the binder— and immediately slapped it closed again upon seeing the first drawing.

“Is this porn?” Elena mouthed, glancing around them to see if anyone had been looking.

“It’s not porn,” Alicia said, wrapping her arms around herself and making a face and looking incredibly discomforted at having shown anyone the secret binder. “It’s art. Okay? Stuff I have to practice to get good at it but I can’t show anyone because of what they’d say. Okay?! You don’t get good at drawing everything without practicing. It’s not porn.”

Narrowing her eyes, Elena carefully slid the binder off the table and tilted it partway into her lap so that no one else nearby would accidentally see what she was looking at. Upon opening the binder, she again saw the first drawing— a pair of boobs hanging below a pair of shoulders and a neck. Flipping the plastic page protector— another pair of boobs, smaller, different-looking ones from a slightly different angle. The next page, more boobs. The next, boobs again.

Holding her place between binder pages with her fingers, she flipped it closed again so she could shoot Alicia an incredulous look.

“It’s art!” Alicia protested, covering her face. “Don’t judge me!”

“Are there penises, too?” Elena remarked in a dry voice, opening the binder to skim through the pages.

“Ew, no. I’m not drawing penises!” Alicia seemed aghast. “That’s disgusting!”

“Alicia—what, are you gay?” Elena asked, looking from one sketch of naked breasts to the next in disbelief. “These are all boobs.”

“It’s an art thing, oh my God,” Alicia hissed defensively. “The naked female form is full of artistic beauty that I really want to be able to express. Okay?! It’s not super sexual or anything, but yeah okay of course that’s the conclusion everyone’s just gonna jump to right away. So, you see why I never show these ever ever?”

“Yeah,” Elena said, impassively examining the depictions of naked women drawn from the side, and drawings of them in various contorted positions. “Some of these are really good.”

“Yeah?” Alicia squeaked.

“But, then a lot of them look really weird,” Elena remarked.

“Weird,” Alicia repeated. “Weird how?”

“Like...” Elena went back several pages until she found a particular drawing again. “Like, here. Between her boob and her arm it looks weird, see? And then the boobs look pressed together like she’s wearing something, when she’s not. This boob would be out… here, like in this direction. But, you drew her with cleavage.”

“Uhhh okay yeah that one is super messed up,” Alicia admitted. “I know the boob position on that one’s wrong, but the way the shape turned out was nice, so I had to save it for that.”

“You did it again with this one,” Elena pointed out, rifling through the pages. “And this one. On the ones where you draw where the bottom rib stands out a bit, it’s down too low on her torso. Like the proportions are off, so she looks wrong.”

“Okay okay okay!” Alicia groused. “Now you totally see why it’s something I have to practice, then! And a lot of these are old drawings anyways, geez! I just keep all of the nudie ones together like this, some of these are from forever ago.”

“Just don’t draw on the nipples, and these won’t all be gross,” Elena made a slightly disgusted face. “If you’d add in a few lines to give them clothing, it’s less… weird and like porn, and you wouldn’t have to keep these secret.”

“You wouldn’t get it,” Alicia sighed.

“Yeah, I guess,” Elena said, casually flipping through the rest of the pages. “Which one’s the one you think Tabitha knew of?”

“...Very last page,” Alicia said with a hint of trepidation.

Wasting no time, Elena turned to the very end.

“Okay,” Elena said, staring at it intently.

“Okay what?” Alicia prompted, squirming in her seat.

“Okay, this one’s different,” Elena remarked, letting her eyes search up and down the drawing as she tried to put it into words. “This one’s really good. Who’s she supposed to be?”

The final drawing stood apart from the rest in that it seemed to convey something larger than the sum of its lines. Rather than the shock value explicit and in-your-face drawings of tits, this was a woman’s naked back, with only a hint of breast visible on one side. The musculature of the woman’s posture hinted at context, the detailing in each tangled curl of hair traveling down her neck and across one shoulder seemed significant somehow, and something about the way it was drawn was simply moving.

“I don’t know!” Alicia whispered. “I’ve no idea. This one just kinda came to me. Inspiration. The anatomy’s not exactly accurate. But, this one was totally free-hand and without any references, and it still came out looking like a billion times better than anything I’ve ever drawn.”

“I don’t think it’s better than your new stuff,” Elena pursed her lips in doubt as she examined the piece.

“It is,” Alicia insisted. “It completely is. The others look good, but this is good. It has better feeling. It’s more. I’ve tried to draw this one a bunch of other times and they never carry even like a tiny fraction of what this one has.”

“I don’t really get it,” Elena said. But then, maybe I also kinda do?

“What Tabitha described to me,” Alicia leaned in close to whisper, “was the future perfect dream version of this that I know I’m going to manage to do someday. She put into words like, exactly how I want her back, how I want to have these parts here just defined by light and shadow so they’re a little more subtle—she knew. Because, I think she’d seen it. The finished version.”

“There’s other explanations,” Elena said.

“No one else even knows about this crappy version here!” Alicia insisted. “Let alone what it’ll be when it’s complete. It’s not like I sit there and draw leaning back ‘gainst my bedroom window so people outside can all see what I work on.”

“Okay,” Elena couldn’t help but slightly concede in the face of Alicia’s apparent conviction. “But, that doesn’t mean Tabitha’s from the future. That’s still, like, the least likely explanation ever.”

“Maybe,” Alicia shrugged, keeping her shoulders hunched in close. “I don’t know. She knows a lot of future stuff, ‘Lena.”

“Stuff that we can’t verify,” Elena pointed out.

“Not yet,” Alicia agreed. “But, eventually? What are you gonna do if she turns out to be right about a lot of big things?”

“Invest,” Elena said simply, closing the three-ring binder and sliding it back across the table towards Alicia. “Make money.”

“Okay,” Alicia sighed. “Maybe there’ll never be a point where you totally believe her all the way. I guess. But, can you at least start believing in her? Like, you don’t have to believe she’s from the future, but can you at least believe that we believe that? That we’re not lying to you, that this isn’t a mean prank and you don’t need to be pissed at us? You can just think we’re totally fucking stupid, if you want.”

“I don’t have stupid friends,” Elena said, unable to hide her annoyance. “So… don’t go saying you guys are stupid, ever. Okay?”

Elena couldn’t help but become even more annoyed as Alicia’s smile grew.

( 30, The girl that time forgot. | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 7 pt 2 )

/// Heatwave here, but doing okayish. Overwhelming urge to play around with Fallout 4 Settlement stuff for some reason (okay running through the Nukaworld OST while I wrote today is to blame), but then remembering what a pain it is starting a new file and gathering resources to make anything decent puts me off.

Might try buying No Man's Sky now that I've heard it's changed so much for the better. I want a game I can really escape into, but not one with such immersive lore / story that it'd keep me from thinking about my fictions while I did so. Usually that's Minecraft, but feeling ehhh about Minecraft at the moment.