RE: Trailer Trash 50 pt D (Patreon)

/// Directly continues from pt C here. Sorry for the delays! This overall Christmas chap has high highs and low lows, I wound up kind of writing out the sections backwards and posting them up wouldn't have made much sense to anyone reading. Expect a daily RE:TT section for the next three days to complete ch 50, then the rest of early May I'm gonna be back to working on AnimeCon for a bit.

“Merry Christmas,” Joshua answered with an awkward stare.

“Are my parents here, yet?” Tabitha asked. “Uncle Alan and your auntie Shannon? I don’t see his truck.”

“Nope,” Joshua said. “Do you want me to help you carry that?”

“I think I’ll manage,” Tabitha said in a dry voice, brushing past his grabby hands. “You just want to peek at the presents!”

“Just a peek!” Aiden begged. “Pleeaaase.”

“I was just gonna help carry them, I wasn’t gonna look!” Joshua promised. “I swear.”

“Uh-huh,” Tabitha’s skepticism was apparent as she stopped by the driver’s side window of the car. “I’m off… I suppose. Wish me luck?”

“You’ll be fine,” The driver lady assured her. “Have a great Christmas, and have fun! Call me if you need to, for anything. Okay?”

“I will,” Tabitha said. “Thanks for the lift. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” The lady said, giving them another small wave as she pulled on down the street.

“We’re not allowed to open presents until everyone’s here,” Joshua said, a small hop helping convey his urgency. “Gramma said this year we havta have a big family Christmas.”

“Are you boys doing okay?” Tabitha asked.

“Yeah?” Joshua responded, confused by the question. “We want to open all the presents.”

“No durr,” Aiden performed an exaggerated eye roll.

Joshua watched as Tabitha let out a long, slow sigh that turned into vapor in the chilly December air. She seemed distracted, on edge even, and her gaze followed the lady’s car as it rolled on down the street, paused at the stop sign, and then made a turn to disappear down the neighborhood.

“I just—” Tabitha started to say something and then seemed to hesitate. “We want you boys to have an amazing Christmas. A memorable one. Even though your parents won’t be here. Maybe… especially because your parents won’t be here.”

“We’re fine,” Aiden sounded a little defensive. “It’s not even a big deal.”

“It is, though,” Tabitha shook her head.

The teenager adjusted the paper bag to one hip and then she hunkered down to kneel, so that she would be at eye level with them. Joshua caught a glance of the wrapped presents over the lip of the bag before averting his eyes with a sense of guilt.

“You’re excited about presents now, I get it,” Tabitha forced a small smile for them. “But… as the years go on by, the toys and games’ll mean less and less to you.”

“Pssh, yeah right,” Aiden scoffed in disbelief. “Yeah—I don’t think so.”

“They will!” Tabitha insisted. “You’ll have your own money someday, and the freedom to buy whatever you like. Even toys and games, if that’s what you’re interested in then.”

“We’ll still want free presents at Christmas,” Joshua argued.

“What I’m saying, is,” Tabitha blew out another slow breath. “When you get older, there’s going to be all sorts of things that no amount of money can ever buy. Grandma’s not going to be around forever, and one day the time will come when we won’t get to have any more Christmases with her. It’s easy to scoff at the family part of Christmas now, when you can take it for granted.

“It’s not just Grandma, either—you four boys have grown up together and basically never been apart,” Tabitha pointed out. “Eventually, the time will come when you’re each eighteen, when you each go out on your separate paths to make your way in the world. Maybe you’ll stay in touch with each other and still remain close—maybe you won’t. Some of you may be too busy to make time for Christmas get-togethers, some of you might have your own families to worry about someday. Some of you might even be in prison—yes, it is a possibility.”

“No way,” Aiden shook his head.

“Either way, years and years from now you’ll look back on this Christmas, and it probably won’t be the toys and games you wind up missing,” Tabitha concluded. “Those will be things you can get yourself any time you please.”

“We get it, we get it,” Aiden threw his hands up in exasperation. “Be thankful for what we have and all that blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, yackety-smackety.”

“Appreciate our family, even when really they’re a bunch of lame bozos,” Joshua added. “I mean—except for you, obviously. And grandma. But like, Tabitha, it’s easy for you to say all that, you don’t havta deal with three brothers every day. And I’m the youngest!”

“Hmm, you’re right,” Tabitha gave him a wry smile and reached up to brush his bangs back from his forehead. “I know, I know. I get it. Everyone who has presents for you just wants to be all preachy about appreciation! Right?”

“Yeah, kinda?” Joshua gave her an expressive but what can you do shrug. “But, it’s okay.”

“We’re used to it,” Aiden put on an aggrieved face. “Now—c’mon!”

“Alright, alright,” Tabitha chuckled, rising back up to her feet with an unsteady waver and hefting the bag up again. “Thank you for humoring this old lady, at least. I do start to get sentimental about it all here in my twilight years of, uh… fourteen.”

*     *     *

Okay, that made me FEEL old, Tabitha did her best not to grimace as she followed the hyper Joshua and overenthusiastic Aiden up the porch steps and inside the apartment.

Guess before you know it, you just start getting into these patronizing lectures—about how they need to savor these childhood moments, before they’re gone. When actually, I might as well be speaking Swahili, right? They literally CANNOT understand what I’m talking about. Being a kid is all they know, and the contexts of adulthood might as well be sixth-dimensional incomprehensible screeching from beyond the gellar field. What does anyone even gain from attempting to describe concepts they’re not going to be able to grasp? Is it for my own benefit, so I can feel better about myself? Is it so I can say ‘I told you so,’ later on?

Grandma Laurie’s place was uncomfortably warm while still bundled up, and so Tabitha shed her jacket and carefully hung it up on the rack near the door. Just like last time she visited, the apartment was neat and tidy and had been vacuumed recently, and it was amusing to her that this was getting to be her new impression of grandma Laurie’s place. Throughout the summer it had been a regular pigpen of toys everywhere and messes left by her cousins, and she liked to imagine her positive influence was leading them to become less like slovenly wild children.

Which is ridiculous, it’s obvious they just cleaned because they were preparing for company, Tabitha chided herself with a knowing smile. Still. It looks nice. They even have a tree!

It was a five foot tall plastic Christmas tree with rather sparse branches, decorated with an assortment of colored balls and then ‘kids-craft’ ornaments. If she were to speculate, she would assume each year at elementary school around this time of year the classes had them make up ornaments with styrofoam, glue, construction paper and glitter.

Some of the dangling things were shaped like gingerbread men, some were slightly squashed snowflake paper lanterns, there were candy-cane ones with a letter of a boy’s name positioned on each of the twisting stripes, there were snowmen heads with stovepipe hats, a Santa Claus with a beard made out of painted macaroni, and a few slapdash creations of glue and paper she couldn’t even begin to guess at.

Oh, wait—I guess that one’s originally a pine cone? Probably spray-adhesive and glitter on a pine cone, then construction paper ‘ornaments’ and… I think those are googly eyes?

Beneath the tree was a poor-man’s family Christmas present pile, and Tabitha regarded it with a wry smile for a moment. Unlike the collection of seventeen different wrapping paper rolls Tabitha had been given freedom to raid over at the Macintire’s, all of the ones here were in a binary of two colors; festive holiday green paper, and light blue paper. Upon closer inspection, the light blue design was adorned with clip art balloons and confetti and the words ‘Happy Birthday,’ indicating the wrapping paper roll had been borrowed from another occasion.

Still, it has a lot of heart, Tabitha slipped out of her new shoes and headed towards the kitchen in search of her grandmother. The Macintires aren’t even having much of a proper Christmas; it’s just a big ‘Hannah gets a ton of presents’ day over there.

With Officer Macintire still on orders for bedrest and Mrs. Macintire working a lot of hours, Sandra had made the executive decision to not haul in a big tree this year or drag all of their decorations down from the attic. Hannah had sulked about it for a bit, and Tabitha had volunteered to do all the legwork if necessary, but Mrs. Macintire was able to justify her veto by waving it off and saying that this year they could just go visit the Williams family for brunch sometime in the next few days. Mrs. Williams was sure to have gone all out, and their community over there was apparently one of those weird suburban areas where neighbors got competitive about Christmas light displays along the rooftops, bushes, and yards.

Well, and then Officer Macintire made some kinda off-color jokes about them going Jewish just for this year, Tabitha wanted to cringe at remembering. I don’t know. Maybe I’m biased. The best Christmas is one spent here, with the boys! All of them are practically VIBRATING with Christmas spirit.

“Hi Tabitha!” Samuel stood up from where he had been sitting on the couch—well, he stood up on the couch. “Merry Christmas!”

“Get down,” Tabitha swatted at him with a smile. “Merry Christmas. Nicholas, you have icing all over your face. Just FYI, little guy.”

“I know,” Nicholas grinned. “Gramma made cinnamon rolls!”

“I can still smell them!” Tabitha said, leaning back as Samuel tried peeking into the paper bag in her arms. “Are there any left?”

“Uhhh, I think they’re all gone,” Joshua said, rushing past her. “But, I’ll go see!”

“Save one for Tabitha!” Samuel hollered.

“Um, save a couple for me, please,” Tabitha corrected. “Were you all waiting on me?”

“We havta wait for uncle Alan and aunt Shannon, too,” Aiden informed her with a scowl. “And—they're not even here yet! It’s practically noon already! We want to open presents!”

“We wanna open presents!” Nicholas joined in. “It’s noon already!”

“It’s… a quarter past nine, actually,” Tabitha pointed out with a glance at the VCR’s digital display. “But, I totally get it! Happy I get to see you guys again so soon. Oh, and—thank you all again for going to my birthday party.”

“It was really cool,” Samuel said with a shrug. “We never get to go skating.”

“We never get to go see movies much, either,” Nicholas griped. “Like, hardly ever.”

“Well, it’s not much, but I do have presents for you guys this year—”

“Gramma says twenty minutes on the next batch of synonym rolls!” Joshua yelled from the kitchen. “She’s makin’ a whole bunch more!”

“—Thank you, Joshua!” Tabitha called back. “Cinnamon.”

“Synonym. That’s what I said—cimma-mim. Cimma—cin-namon.”

“Hm,” Tabitha quirked another smile. “Well, can you boys do me a real big favor? Can you all go and help grandma in the kitchen for a second, maybe get plates and everything to set the table so we can all eat soon as my parents get here?”

“No way—we’re all havin’ breakfast after opening presents,” Samuel blurted out.

“Yeah,” Aiden agreed, looking horrified. “Has to be after.”

“I mean, either way,” Tabitha stuck out her tongue. “Go help grandma! Scoot. So that I can sneak these presents into the pile.”

“Go help grandma!” Samuel stiffened and gave her a salute at mention of presents.

“Go help gramma!” Nicholas bounded off the couch and managed to shove Aiden out of the way.

“Hey!” Aiden protested, failing to tug Samuel back as they all rushed towards the kitchen. “Go help gramma!”

“Guys. It’s not even ready yet, she said—” Joshua’s confused voice sounded from the kitchen.

“Shut up, stupid!”

“Yeah, we’re helping grandma.”

“Tabitha brought presents, doofus.”

“I’m the one who even told you she was gonna!”

“Did not.”

“I did too!”

“Boys, boys,” Grandma Laurie exasperation could be heard. “Aiden, don’t—Samuel, put that down, you’re liable to burn yourself. Joshua, those’re oven mitts, not boxing gloves, you stop that.”

As quickly as she could, Tabitha dropped down into a crouch, hugging the paper bag against herself with her cast hand while she withdrew the present on top, the gameboy color for Samuel—and slid it beneath the couch, pushing the gift in until the upholstery skirting of the couch completely concealed it. Then, she rose and hurried down the hallway. Nicholas was next, and his gift was hidden in the bathroom cupboard. She peeked out to see if the boys were still occupied, and then made a beeline over towards her cousin’s room.

Huh, they got a second bunk bed, Tabitha hesitated for a moment, bag starting to crumple as she pulled out Aiden’s gameboy color. Okay, no clue who sleeps where, just gonna put it under the pillow over here. The note says HIS pillow, but well—he’ll find it!

Crossing through the hallway again, Tabitha scampered through the open door to grandma Laurie’s bedroom in the back and took out Joshua’s present, managing to hide it just to the side of the television she had on her dresser there. Scavenger hunt-style instructions were already prepared, written along with Merry Christmas wishes on little slips of paper that she had hidden in the little plastic toy capsules won from the Food Lion vending machine.

Well, not really much of a scavenger hunt, I guess, Tabitha couldn’t stifle her enormous grin of excitement.

She dashed back out to the apartment’s living room and then buried the four small and unassuming gashapon capsules deep in the pile of presents beneath the tree. With her overwrap of Christmas paper and the big bows, the things now rather resembled large, oblong eggs. Or maybe acorns.

Still should be fun, though!

Her original idea had been to lead each of the young boys on a three or four stage wild goose hunt across the apartment for locations where she had hidden written clues in little Pokeball capsules... but pragmatism had simplified her plan quite a bit. Using riddles seemed too close to torture for elementary-age boys undoubtably eager to find their presents, so she’d just jotted down directly where their prize would be hidden. Also, actual plastic Pokeball toys were expensive, and even using little vending machine toy capsules had cost her three quarters each! Which was quite a ripoff, considering the three sticky hand toys and single bouncy ball she got in return were probably worth pennies.

The Christmas cards she got for the grown-ups were already in their respective envelopes, and she carefully placed each of them on top of the present pile. For: Grandma, the first one read. Dad, another one stated in simple cursive. To: Mom, the one beside it said. Tabitha stared at them each for a long moment before standing back up and withdrawing from the little tree, and as if her attention had summoned them—she looked up to see that through the front window, her father’s truck was pulling in to park.

Her parents had arrived, and it was time for Christmas.