RE: Trailer Trash 52 pt 6 (Patreon)

/// I DO NOT OWN IMAGINARY. But queue it up on Youtube, 'cause you're gonna wanna listen to it again towards the end of this. 

How come I’m like, the only one of my friends who has a job—yet I’M the one that’s ALWAYS broke? Nicole thought to herself in annoyance. Just kill me. Please.

She wasn’t having a great day.

Someone at their impromptu weekend party had sat on her last pack of smokes, and now it was half-squished. She now had to ration out misshapen cigarettes, and the number remaining—six—seemed like a countdown to her having a complete manic episode. The beer in her apartment fridge kept magically disappearing, and she’d woken up feeling like trash for several days in a row, now. The dark, ash-blonde of her natural hair color was creeping up her roots like a disease, and the green dye that had been so vivid just weeks ago now just made her feel like a clown, because her self confidence had taken a serious hit or two lately.

Nicole adjusted the oversized black hoodie she was wearing—the hood decorated liberally with safety pins—in annoyance. She had maybe put on weight over the holidays, but her mother having the gall to point it out now made her feel wretched every time she was anywhere near a mirror. It went without saying she was now uncomfortable and paranoid whenever she caught somebody looking in her direction.

She was used to being judged, but it was supposed to be on her terms, for her lifestyle, or being punk provocative, for making a bold anarchist statement. Not for her fucking figure.

What is this, the nineteen thirties?! Shouldn’t have gone to Christmas with them at all, Nicole scowled. Fuckin’ free food. Suckers me into the same old punishment, year after year after year.

Her stepdad wasn’t even the problem, anymore—well, this stepdad wasn’t. It was her stupid mother who just always had to start making constant vicious jabs at her. Last year it was her piercings, before that it was her hair. This year it was saying she was getting fat. Which was ludicrous. Just because her favorite pair of torn jeans had shrunk in the wash didn’t mean she was putting on weight.

“Nicole—you’re getting a little chunky,” her mother had remarked between forkfuls of turkey.

Nicole had found herself completely aghast. CHUNKY. As if that was a perfectly acceptable thing to fuckin’ say about someone. Fine dinner conversation.

“Yeah, I don’t go by NICOLE anymore,” Nicole had scoffed, shoving her plate back and standing up. “Thanks. Thanks for RUINING Christmas, mom.”

“Oh, stop,” her mother hadn’t even looked up at her, that time. “I’m not calling you ZIPPER, or ZIPPO or—whatever it was. You’re not a dog, Nicole.”

“Ziggy,” her stepfather had supplied.

“I’M not calling her that, and YOU need to quit encouraging her,” her mother had said. “She’s nineteen already. It’s time for her to start acting like it.”

Just remembering it made Nicole want to storm out all over again. But, she was at work. It was Hot Topic, at least, which was supposed to be her special sanctum, but it was still also work, and she was tired. She hated how much she needed these paychecks. She hated her family—or she wanted to. That’d be much more simple. She really hated how understanding her stepdad Mr. Gary was, because that was inconsistent with her current reality, and it made it harder for her to throw blanket hate in that direction.

Which would have been way more convenient and so much less trouble to navigate.

Because, fuck you, mom—at least he DOES encourage me, Nicole swore as the label gun clacked but failed to plant a sticker on the next surface in the stack of CD cases she was repricing. Fuck! FUCK! Are you serious right now?!

Turning the oblong orange plastic gun in her hand, she could see there was still plenty of sticker roll left inside. It had jammed up. Again. In frustration she squeezed the trigger three more times in quick succession, hoping the stupid piece of shit would cough out a wad of gummed-together tags, but this time she had no luck. Nothing came out, and on her third pull, the trigger remained depressed in and wouldn’t even come back out.

“Fuck!” Nicole swore, tossing the contraption onto the counter with a clatter.

“Hey, hey, easy on the little thing,” Mr. Gary admonished in a soft voice stepping over to examine the gun. “She’s old.”

“Everything in here is old,” Nicole made a disgusted face at him.

She felt the usual flash of guilt and regret that came with treating him the way she did, because as always, he didn’t deserve it. Anything and everything was just getting under her skin, today. Her bangs kept getting in her face, because she hadn’t taken the time to gel up her hair into spikes—so of course it was just a big shaggy mess, today. It was pissing her off. Everything was pissing her off.

“Ooh, harsh,” Mr. Gary chuckled, cracking the price gun open and peeling back where the stickers had begun adhering to the mouth of the device. “You just gotta be a li’l more gentle with her, and she’ll treat you right. Alright?”

“Yeah, well I’m doing my job,” Nicole growled, separating the newly-stickered CDs away from the stack and waggling them. “It needs to do its job. That’s how this relationship works.”

“There,” Mr. Gary triggered out a sticker onto his fingertip and then snapped the casing back closed again, satisfied. “Remember—gentle.”

“I am gentle!” Nicole snarled, snatching it from him.

She bashed the gun into the next CD case and gripped the trigger, stamping a sticker crooked onto the face of a Sugar Ray album. She hated them anyways—in her opinion, they needed to quit stocking so much pop band radio music and actually put stuff on the shelves that people needed to hear. Music that actually meant something.

“Hey, I talked to Linda, ‘bout Christmas,” Mr. Gary mentioned, lingering by the counter. “She—”

“I don’t care,” Nicole hissed. “I don’t care.”

“She didn’t mean it to come out the way she said it,” Mr. Gary pressed. “She was just worried about you.”

“Oink oink, look at the piggie daughter,” Nicole let out a bitter laugh, turning the gun against her stepdad and shooting a pair of $14.99 tags onto his tattooed bicep. “Are you sure you should be encouraging me?”

“I’ve talked with her about it, and she’s sorry she said it like she did,” Mr. Gary said again. “You could be a little easier on her too, you know? She’s been pretty stressed.”

“That’s not my problem,” Nicole shook her head in defiance. “She doesn’t get to call me fat. Not with her armchair spread. Just look at her!”

“I’m just sayin’—try to go easy on her,” Gary pulled off one of the stickers on his arm and thumbed it onto the shoulder of Nicole’s shirt. “We’re all in this together, yeah?”

“It’s not my fault everything is old and broken,” Nicole muttered as she watched him walk back over to the band tees section that took up the entire far wall.

“Maybe not, but we’ve gotta work with what we’ve got,” Mr. Gary called over his shoulder as he returned to sorting shirts. “...The label gun, I mean.”

“Yeah, right,” Nicole rolled her eyes.

At least the stupid sticker gun wasn’t quite so quick to label her chunky.

It was so damn irritating that Mr. Gary was cool, instead of the stereotypical strict and straight-laced stepfather. He had full tattoo sleeves, he used to ride a motorcycle—how had her boring dowdy fucking mother managed to hook up with someone like Mr. Gary, of all people? It was beyond her understanding. He wasn’t even just a good dad—he was a great boss. Nicole knew her last dollar-seventy raise wasn’t exactly merited from her outstanding work.

Which sucks, because now I actually feel GUILTY just stealing shit, Nicole scowled all over again. When I know how stupidly overpriced it all is in the first place. Hot Topic is a total scam.

Nicole’s mind wandered back and forth as she finished repricing everything on the sales list that had been printed out. She’d accidentally left the dial on $14.99 for a few of the ones that should have been $16.99, and with a face of disgust she leafed back through the stack with her fingertips and applied lopsided new price tags on top of the wrong ones. She was so sick of this.

Her girlfriend Monique didn’t even have to deal with family bullshit—they all sat and passed around the bong with her mom, over there. The strung-out woman being something between a hippy and some kind of wiccan, but when asked about her spirituality seemed to ramble on about different star readings and interpretations rather than ever providing something specific she would be stuck with keeping to. Which seemed awfully smart. Monique’s mom collected crystals, had five large dogs in an apartment that only allowed one small pet, and the place featured dreamcatchers and bird skulls and cool stuff decorating everywhere.

And, she never ever looked at her daughter and said, ‘you know fatso, you sure are getting chunky,’ Nicole scowled all over again. Who DOES that?

“Ahhhhhh~ahhhhh~Ahhhhh~ahhhh~!” A rising melody, sung in a capella, interrupted her thoughts. “—Pa~per—flow~ers~!”

When she looked up to see who it was, Nicole discovered it was that girl again, the redhead, the strange, possibly-satan cute friend of Elena’s had returned their Sandboro Hot Topic. Elena herself was trailing along several steps behind the girl, face torn between exasperation and amusement. Despite the obvious difference in the notes being sung, Nicole couldn’t help but think of Ariel sacrificing her voice to the sea witch as she watched Tabitha enter the store.

“Ahhhhhh~ahhhhh~Ahhhhh~ahhhh!” Tabitha was blushing slightly, maybe embarrassed, but looked serious rather than like she was playing around, almost even somber as she delivered the impromptu performance. “—Pa~per—flow~ers~!”

While it wasn’t crazy busy today, there were shoppers about, and every head in the store did turn in that direction. So; Nicole made her decisive move. With a ducking motion to reach the sound system down beneath the counter, she killed the in-store music so they could all hear her better. The background noise of a Limp Bizkit track she didn’t care for in the first place cut out—and the redhead stepping into Hot Topic had a mezzo soprano that seemed to rush in to fill every inch of silence left behind.

“I linger in the doorway~”

“Of alarm clocks screaming, monsters calling my name,”

“Let me stay where the wind will whisper to me,”

“Where the raindrops as they're falling tell a story~”

It was… surprisingly good? Really, really good. Nicole didn’t recognize the lyrics, but each bit that was sung out felt like she should have recognized them. Some strange part of how they were delivered grabbed at her attention in a particular way, like someone was pulling her out of a dream. One elbow down on the counter, Nicole leaned back to see if Gary was hearing this, and she caught him frozen in place with a folded shirt in his hands, grinning.

“In my field of paper flowers~!”

“And candy clouds of lullaby!”

“I lie inside myself for hours~!”

“And watch my purple sky fly over me!”

/// I do not own Imaginary! Full credit to Evanescence and immortal fairy Amy Lee, actual Imaginary lyrics will once again be stripped out for official chapter versions of the text here. Am still trying to contact for permission to keep it included, even willing to PAY a sizeable chunk of whatever book profits I make, because I love the music, I want to share these songs with readers, and I want readers to be able to see how these effect the characters.

/// Okay, so Nicole. Ziggy. Her being referred to as Nicole in narrative as intentional! There are identity issues there, and I want to establish her as the unreliable goth mentor to Elena, someone who actually no, does not have her shit together really at all. AnimeCon readers will recognize some strong Kelly influences here, probably. Over the past few weeks I've put a lot of time and research into Nicole/Ziggy, who she is, what she drives, how she lives, because she will be one of the key figures that helps (and is helped to) transition from clueless nineties teen towards an adult.

LOT of themes to play with! One of the more obvious, in-your-face ones being that Elena really looks up to Ziggy, while Elena herself is many many more times mature than Ziggy. Like it's not even close.

Can Elena see that? No. Can Nicole? Hell no.

But, to Tabitha it's going to start to seem really obvious.

/// To anyone who remarks that Nicole is too young to have beer in her fridge, you're absolutely right, but also you maybe didn't live through the nineties. To note, I don't support underage drinking or recreational drug use and intend the characters as written to be a cautionary tale rather than presented as role models.