RE: Trailer Trash

“The fuck do you mean she wasn’t at the party?!” Brittany raged, using her fingertips to shove Ashlee back again. “Uh, hello? That exact bitch I pointed out to you was at the party. She said so herself, now everyone thinks I’m an idiot.”

Brittany wasn’t usually prone to lashing out in physical acts of violence like Erica always had—the sharp little shoves stung, and Ashlee covered the tender aches they left behind just above her boobs, but they didn’t hurt. Not like fists did, not like it used to when Erica kicked her. Ashlee recoiled back against the wall and shielded her face all the same, because if she’d learned one thing over the course of her childhood, was that you never wanted to let your abuser believe they weren’t hitting you hard enough.

“I don’t know!” Ashlee wailed. “I—I don’t remember seeing her there. I don’t know!”

She really didn’t remember seeing the smiling girl from that yearbook photo. No one believed her, though. This morning Clarissa had mentioned that oh, yeah you’re wrong about it, she was totally there, but Ashlee only trusted her own recollection. There had been two older guys and two older girls—probably sophomores or juniors. Tabitha and her boyfriend, and then Tabitha’s two cronies, they all seemed like they were probably freshmen. Then five elementary kids, which were cousins or younger siblings of someone or other.

“Okay, well, everyone’s saying she was there, so all I can do is repeat to everyone that yeah, my little sister’s fucking retarded,” Brittany scowled, shoving Ashlee again. “Yeah, great. What am I supposed to even tell everyone, now? ‘Yeah sorry, you know my stupid little sister! She has that bum eye, guess Olivia was just SITTING IN HER BLIND SPOT that whole fucking night.’ As if everyone doesn’t already think you’re a stupid fucking stain.”

“She wasn’t there!” Ashlee sobbed out. “She’s lying!”

The sob was mostly fake, although letting herself choke up with emotion enough to really cry was never too difficult. It was an excuse to escalate things in volume enough to annoy Aunt Kimberly, which sometimes brought these confrontations to a conclusion. This kind of ploy would never have worked if Erica was still here—Erica would have gut-punched the wind out of her, or pinned her to the floor, sat on top of her and covered her mouth. That suffocating helplessness still occasionally gave her pangs of terror, and Ashlee always forced those memories back down before the nausea and panic attached to them could spill out.

“Could you both stop? Please?” Aunt Kimberly yelled over from the living room. “What are you two even fighting about? Can you just cut it out? I was at work all damned day, I don’t need to come home to this. Okay?”

Their aunt wasn’t really equipped to take care of teenage girls, and each week that went by saw her attempts at being stern and laying down the law start to wear down into indifference and irritation. She had been real sympathetic at first due to the whole ‘child abuse’ situation, but then Ashlee had made the mistake of getting caught stealing things from her purse, and then gotten in even more trouble for lying about it. Back when they were still living with their parents it had been easy to obfuscate blame for missing stuff, because Erica and Brittany weren’t always united and didn’t trust each other, and they each had different friends that would come over. Ashlee had even pretended that Tabitha was still coming over.

All of that changed when they were shuffled off to live with their Aunt. Erica was gone off to the juvie center, and so Erica’s friends were out of the picture. Brittany was ashamed of their new living situation and didn’t want her peers seeing how she lived, here. That meant when something went missing, the list of suspects was just Ashlee and Brittany, and with them growing wise to her game, it meant Ashlee was always guilty, whether or not they could prove it.

“Ashlee lied to me about something super important,” Brittany tattled. “Now everyone at school thinks I’m just making stuff up to try and mess with Tabitha.”

“Because you are!” Ashlee cried. So what if I’m not even friends with the Tabby imposter—if she can get YOU in trouble, then I can act like we’re friends when I’m here at home.

“Only because you lied to me!” Brittany shoved Ashlee again.

This time the fingers pressed higher up, enough to unbalance Ashlee and have the motion of the push knock the back of Ashlee’s head against the wall. That hurt, and it was thankfully just enough to help Ashlee summon some tears to her eyes. Now she just had to find a way to squeeze past Brittany through the hall to show their aunt—then Brittany would be in way more trouble.

“Would you both just stop it?” Their aunt called over. “Brittany, you’re supposed to be steering clear of that Tabitha girl. Ashlee—”

“See?! SEE!” Ashlee gloated. “She—”

“And Ashlee, stop trying to cause trouble,” Aunt Kimberly chastised her. “I know you’re always trying to stir up trouble. You don’t need to have anything to do with that Tabitha girl, either.”

“But she’s my friend!” Ashlee protested, injecting disbelief and despair into her voice. “You can’t—”

“Stop faking it, you’re barely even really crying,” Brittany scoffed.

She tried to shove Ashlee again, but this time Ashlee was able to catch the pressing hands on the back of her arms and ward them off. That was something Ashlee would have never, ever attempted to do with Erica—fighting back had been a mistake she made twice, and it had invited the most brutal retaliation Ashlee had ever experienced in her life. Things were different here, now that Erica was out of the picture. Ashlee wasn’t going to make it as easy for Brittany to push her around, anymore.

“Both of you stop, go on to your own separate rooms,” Aunt Kimberly ordered. “I don’t know what this is about this time, I don’t care, I’ve told you both a hundred times to just stop, so just stop. Go to your separate rooms—if you can behave, you can come out for dinner.”

Seeing that their aunt wasn’t going to come break them up in person or appreciate her tears, Ashlee wiped them away across her face and gave her sister a triumphant sneer. It wasn’t really any kind of victory, but the important thing was to pretend like it was. Brittany of course wasn’t too impressed, and the older sister made a pssh face and rolled her eyes before turning and storming off to the other bedroom.

“Whatever. Not like it matters?” Brittany muttered. “Your precious little tubby Tabby went and messed with the cheerleaders. She’s basically signed her own death warrant. She’s through.”

The door to Brittany’s room slammed, and that was when Ashlee felt like she had a small win. Because, for whatever bizarre reason even Brittany thought the Tabitha at school was Ashlee’s old fat friend Tabitha. When in reality, they weren’t even the same person—everyone except Ashlee had bought into the imposter’s whole act somehow. They all thought the skinny preppy girl with lots of friends was Tabby, which meant they never knew Tabby at all.

So, she thinks those little jabs will get to me, when really they mean nothing to me at all, Ashlee felt a surge of glee. Because me and the fake Tabitha AREN’T friends. We could never be friends. I don’t even know who she is.

With a rare rush of elation, Ashlee stepped down the hall and into her own tiny room. Unlike Brittany’s actual room, Ashlee was given the back porch of her Aunt’s place, but renovations back in the eighties meant it was a covered and enclosed porch, almost as good as a real room. Just, the carpets were thin outdoor carpet mats instead of plush ones like inside, and instead of floor vents for heat, she had to make due with a little space heater.

Still no idea what happened to the REAL Tabby, Ashlee felt bewildered. My best guess is that the imposter, she’s Tabby’s cousin or something, that she must have gotten into trouble somewhere. So, her family moved her here and told everyone she was Tabby. Probably to keep her from having A RECORD, to keep her out of places like the juvenile detention center in Breathitt where Erica is locked up.

“So… where are you?” Ashlee wondered out loud, hopping on her bed. “If this ‘Tabitha’ is here… then where are you, who are you pretending to be? Being MADE to pretend to be…”

If they installed the fake Tabitha into Tabby’s life here, then didn’t that mean the real Tabby had been forced to assume the fake Tabitha’s life, wherever she was from? Which meant, whatever trouble that necessitated the switch had been inherited by Tabby. It was believable, because wouldn’t that just be Tabby’s luck? The poor oaf was probably sitting in a juvie center for someone else’s crimes, and no one would believe her.

Because no one ever believes us, Ashlee seethed. Ever.

The switch where two girls assumed each other’s different identities was implausible, but not impossible. Although Ashlee hadn’t seen the new advertised Lindsay Lohan The Parent Trap that came out last year, they had the old one with Hayley Mills on tape, and she’d seen it dozens of times. Somehow or other, Tabby had been forced to switch places with this fake ‘Tabitha,’ and no one cared enough to look too closely or even really notice. Now this new ‘Tabitha’ was obviously up to no good, because she was pretty and popular and thrilled to stir up all kinds of drama in school.

Which is NOTHING like Tabby, Ashlee knew. That bitch is nothing like my Tabby at all. But—WHERE IS the real Tabby?! How can I find her. Does she need to be RESCUED? Is she sitting in like, a juvie center like Erica is? Or WORSE? Maybe they treat her like she’s crazy, because she keeps trying to tell people she’s not who they’re trying to say she is. Maybe they put her on medication, like on lithium treatments like they did Erica, so she’s too loopy or drugged out to even complain, anymore.

“Somehow or other, I’m gonna find you,” Ashlee told herself. “Going to save you. What I need to do—all I need to do, to make that happen, is expose ‘Tabitha’ the fake. Once everyone realizes she’s not the real Tabby, then everyone will start to ask where’s the real Tabby.”

Ashlee only hoped Tabby was okay. Hoped that she was only suffering in silence in some other different town, or maybe medicated into compliance and serving out someone else’s sentence in juvie, just waiting for the proper authorities to figure out what happened. Because, if the real Tabby was gone for good, if she was dead—then that meant Ashlee had lost her only friend in the entire world.

“Far from the imperial palace… a young woman named Mulan was busli—busi—um, bus-i-ly, busily writing. Notes. On her arm,” Hannah read out loud. “Today was the day for her meeting with the Matchmaker! And, she wanted to be prepared. If she proformed well—”

“—Performed,” Tabitha corrected in a quiet voice.

“—If she performed well, she—” Hannah paused to find her place in the sentence again. “She would bring honor to her family, by making a good match in marriage!”

“Good job, Hannah,” Tabitha said.

“Sorry,” Hannah let out a deep sigh. “I messed up. Again.”

“It’s okay to mess up,” Tabitha assured her. “You don’t have to be sorry for—”

“But I knew those words!” Hannah threw out her hands in aggravation, causing the paperboard cover of the Mulan Disney Classic Storybook in her hand to flap closed. “I even knew those ones already. Per-formed. Bus-i-ly. Just, when I got to them I still messed them up. ‘Cause I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Tabitha said with a bitter smile. “You’re reading very well. Above your grade level! If—”

“Yeah, by one grade,” Hannah retorted. “As if it’s even—”

“Come here, Hannah,” Tabitha patted the couch cushion next to her. “Let’s… take a break.”

“Ugh!” Hannah let out a grunt of frustration as she bounced onto the couch. “Ugghh!”

Her seven-year-old ward was in a mood, today. Tabitha found the change worrying—she feared that now that Hannah had broken decorum and shown her a tantrum, that some subtle pretense of perfect behavior had fallen away and now the real Hannah in all of her flawed glory had been revealed. Things felt different. Hannah talked back more now, she argued, she possessed that strange stubborn and childish pride, and then she also fished for constant compliments and desperate validation at every chance.

“Next page?” Hannah asked.

“Let’s… take a break,” Tabitha sighed.

“Fine,” Hannah huffed, crossing her arms. “I don’t care.”

Now, Hannah was pouting.

She wasn’t really upset, but Hannah was trying very hard to display her obstinacy, because that might let her get her way with things. It was as if the dam had been broken last night, and now all sorts of issues were just pouring out. Most of it was juvenile enough that Tabitha could regard Hannah with a wry smile of amusement and shake her head, but… Tabitha had also had a very, very long day at school. She felt exhausted, and she’d hoped to come home and just have a huggable Hannah to sit with and decompress for a bit. The two girls sat in silence for several minutes, the smaller one fuming in apparent anger and the other simply staring off into space with a vacant expression.

“Next page?” Hannah prompted with impatience. “Tabitha?”

“...I got into a fight today at school,” Tabitha said. “With some girls.”

“You—what?” Hannah sat up, forgetting her moody act. “What?”

“Yeah,” Tabitha sighed. “I—”

“Are you okay?!” Hannah exclaimed, tugging at Tabitha’s arm to examine her. “What happened?!”

“I… threw my own tantrum, I guess,” Tabitha said, allowing Hannah to check her over for injuries. “It felt like. Like, everyone just kept pushing and pushing and pushing me, and finally—I guess I pushed back.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah blurted out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I—”

“Sh-sh-shh, I don’t mean you,” Tabitha let out a small laugh. “Here. Hug. Please?”

“Sorry,” Hannah said, lunging in to tackle Tabitha in a rather crushing hug. “Sorry…”

It hurt—Tabitha felt like she might find a nasty bruise on her side later where a blunt seven-year old had cannonballed into her ribs—but, she hid her grimace and maneuvered her cast out of the way so that she could wrap a comforting arm around the little girl. She did still really need a hug right now, even if it hurt. It hurt a lot, though. It was at times like these Tabitha really discovered the consequences of losing all of the weight over the summer and adopting the vaunted skinny girl physique—an emotional first-grader crashing into her side really felt like getting whacked by a sledgehammer.

Never ever thought I’d miss the uh… well, having some ‘padding,’ there, Tabitha thought to herself, blinking away tears. Geez oh man that hurts. Next thing you know, Coach Baylor’s gonna find black and blue marks, and think the cheerleaders are beating me.

“You, ah, you had your tantrum, and then I had mine,” Tabitha said in a soft voice. “I think… I think the pressure has just been getting to us. To both of us.”

“The pressure?” Hannah asked. “What do you mean? Of what?”

“Yeah,” Tabitha gave Hannah’s back a pat. “The pressure of… everything. It, um, over time it builds and it builds and it builds, and then…”

She had to hesitate for a moment in trying to convey her thoughts here, because Encanto’s song about pressure didn’t exist yet back here in the late nineties—so, Hannah wouldn’t know that one. Tabitha had a bunch of vague memories of different old cartoons depicting boilers becoming overwhelmed and then blowing, but it took her a few seconds to latch onto one to present in analogy.

“Well. It’s like Belle’s father Maurice, his invention,” Tabitha tried to explain. “Maurice’s machine. When his contraption was um, was building up steam, pressure, and then it just… exploded.”

At least, I THINK that happened…? Tabitha pursed her lips. Or am I thinking THE GWEAT WEAPON from An American Tail? Or, one of the other ones? I’m sure something like that happened in The Great Mouse Detective, too. At some point. Just, pinpointing which exact scene is which from Hannah’s many video tapes is… difficult. In THAT regard, I think Hannah’s memory is much better than mine. Encyclopedic, almost.

Hannah was still and silent, and Tabitha couldn’t tell if she agreed or disagreed.

Maybe Tabitha had gone overboard in finding a Disney abstraction to explain something as obvious or common sense as the concept of pressure, and seemed like she was talking down to her. Hannah was probably no stranger to feeling pressure—it was just difficult to tell sometimes, because sometimes Hannah was shockingly astute and perceptive, and other times she was childish and immature.

“I was… in a bad mood today, and just so tired of girls at school pushing me around,” Tabitha admitted. “It gets so exhausting. I—I don’t mean to say I was in a bad mood because of you, because of your. Because of you getting upset last night. I just, I worry so much about this situation. Being here, and then what my mom’s going through, and. Stuff with my dad. The future. I didn’t have my usual patience to… put up with being pushed around at school, today.”

“I thought those girls got espelled,” Hannah grumbled in a quiet voice, still hiding her face against Tabitha’s shoulder. “The mean ones.”

Espelled? EXpelled? Tabitha couldn’t help but smile. “The very mean girl did get expelled. Sort of. The one who hurt me at the party—”

“Erica Taylor,” Hannah hissed with surprising vehemence.

“Yes, her,” Tabitha sighed. “But… truth be told, none of the other girls at school ever liked me very much, either. A lot of them wanted to push me around, or test me. Put me in my place, I don’t know.”

“Why?” Hannah demanded.

“I… I wish I knew, Hannah,” Tabitha lied.

How could she describe the inane complexities of high school hierarchy to a seven-year-old girl? How could she convey the effects of hormones and moodiness that turned boring, mundane classroom settings into a powder keg of melodramatic problems? The web of alliances and narratives and the intangible paradigms of social standing and popularity were so fucking stupid. Stupid and crazy. No one would ever want to try to make sense of it all, unless they were infected with that same bitter madness—that is to say, unless they were a teenager themselves, battling out the trials of adolescence in high school.

She didn’t want Hannah to understand that.

Tabitha wasn’t able to explain most of it to her, because most of it was nonsensical in the first place. What Tabitha really wanted right now was a return to simplicity, to spend time with Hannah or her cousins; children. When kids were under pressure, it built up and then they threw a tantrum. That outburst was their release valve, and then afterwards things were fine, they could enjoy being back to normal. Hell, a new toy or a trip to McDonalds was enough to snap Hannah out of her terrible moods almost instantly.

Teenagers were different when they reached their breaking points. Their emotions were heightened, deepened, these intense feelings steeped into every waking thought and had a tendency to poison everything. Tabitha had been seething at the two cheerleader girls all day, and she was equally furious at Amber. At that aggressive, antagonistic art class girl who was just so immensely self-satisfied with herself for stirring up trouble without regard for facts or the truth of things.

It was just so infuriating!

Likewise, how could she ever convey the different facets of dissension here to Hannah? The points of opposition between teenagers sometimes became symbolic of their larger ‘ideology’—the cheerleader girls snapping at Elena for being ‘gothic,’ and Elena responding with barbed words of her own simply because those girls presented themselves as ‘preppy.’ Let alone the underlying issue of how everyone knew Elena was going to try out for cheer without conforming to their social distinctions. Associating culture or subculture with the petty politick and outright tribalism of high school drama honestly made things even worse. How do you explain that to a seven year old, without realizing how superficial and pointless all of the conflicts really were?

How did word even get around about Elena going for cheer in the first place?Olivia, of all people, knew before I did, Tabitha turned her weary eyes to the ceiling. I’ve found myself in the very unfortunate position of being young enough that I’m completely involved in all of this bullshit, IMMERSED, and also old enough to also see how stupid all of it is. Pray for me, hah. I really don’t care, AT ALL, about any of this stupid nonsense, and then also, at the same time—I can’t STOP myself from caring, WAY TOO MUCH, about all of this same stupid nonsense!

“So what happened?” Hannah pressed for details when she seemed to realize Tabitha wasn’t going to spill everything on her own. “With the girls.”

“They took my towel,” Tabitha revealed. “That neat Polar bear one we bought. I had it hanging up in the girl’s locker room, and. They took it. The coach found out right away and got it back, made them apologize. But. They didn’t mean it at all. It felt like… it felt more like they were mocking me, than really apologizing. So, I—I don’t know what I said to them. I snapped at them, I guess. I was just so over being pushed around all the time. I am. I’m so over it. I don’t remember what I actually said. I’m sure I’ll hear about it tomorrow, though! Hahhh…”

“Can’t they get espelled?!” Hannah demanded. “For stealing. Or in big trouble, at least. Stealing is a crime—they can go to prison.”

“They said it was an accident,” Tabitha gave the girl a helpless shrug. “...It wasn’t really an accident, though.”

“That’s not fair,” Hannah said, raising her head to give Tabitha a furious look.

“I know,” Tabitha agreed. “It’s really not. But—it’s complicated. They’re cheerleaders, and I think they’re all back to just spreading around lies about me. They’re used to getting their way with everything, and everyone’s used to letting that happen, because… they’re pretty and popular. That makes me so mad, too—yes, people listen to my side of things now, but sometimes it feels like that didn’t even start until I lost all the weight and became ‘pretty’ enough for people to listen to. Which sure makes that bittersweet. I know that’s not fair, I know I was, um. That I was to blame for a lot of it, because I was afraid to speak up, because I didn’t have the confidence to… do anything at all. I’m just. I’m so sick of it. All of it. Sometimes, I just wish… I wish…”

Tabitha didn’t know what she was wishing for.

She wanted to be pretty and popular, but she was maybe realizing that the difficulty and stress involved with making that happen undermined or hollowed out any possible result she might achieve, there. Being the cool girl everyone liked was nice as an idle dream, but the process of making it happen really drained all the nice out of it, and turned it into something else entirely.

But, at the same time… I still want it, Tabitha thought to herself with a sour expression. Guess I’ll always want it. Because—because I’m twisted, because I had a previous life of regret and longing for the pretty perfect high school years full of fun and friendship and romance that I missed out on. Maybe that was ALWAYS just a fantasy.

“Are you gonna tell mom?” Hannah asked, searching Tabitha’s expression.

“I… don’t know,” Tabitha said. “I don’t think I want to worry her with everything. Coach Baylor has a handle on it all, I guess. It’s all sort of stupid and pointless to begin with, I just… I can’t help but stew in it, sometimes. Let it get to me. Talking with you helps a lot though, Hannah Banana. You’re a good listener! A great listener. I feel a lot better, about everything, just because you’ve let me vent things out a bit.”

“Mom says I’m a terrible listener,” Hannah pouted. “But, I’m not terrible. I listen.”

“I know you do,” Tabitha couldn’t help but smile and pat Hannah’s adorable head. “...Sometimes.”

“I do listen!”

“Well, when you do listen, you’re a great listener!” Tabitha was trying hard not to sound condescending. “The best. Thank you, Hannah.”