RE: Trailer Trash, 65 pt 7 (Patreon)

    Officer Macintire’s squad car wasn’t present outside when Tabitha arrived home, and with Mrs. Macintire still at work and Hannah in elementary for another hour this meant it was one of those rare times where she had the place completely to herself. Her coat was hung by the door, her clean new shoes were carefully removed, and then Tabitha brought her bookbag over to the dining room table of the eerie empty house. Going from the noise and jubilant chaos of everything with her friends at school and then the loud bus ride to this felt like a splash of cold water to the face.

    How very peculiar, Tabitha thought with a small smile.

    She had to wonder if this meant some core part of herself had fundamentally changed. The introverted her had only ever found peace when solitary. Going out and dealing with people had been mentally draining, and afterwards she needed a good deal of time strictly to herself to recharge her social batteries. Whereas, now as the fledgling extrovert Tabitha, being alone she felt a bit at a loss. Uncomfortable. Like she was wasting precious moments of her achingly brief teenage years of youth that could be spent bonding with others, becoming a part of something.

    Looking out across the table towards the living room, she imagined it full of her friends and newfound family. Perhaps if enough people showed up, they could fill the entire long sectional couch! While this Willow movie played. She was quite a bit more interested in the film now that she heard it was maybe a George Lucas homage of sorts to Lord of the Rings. This would have even been from back when Lucas was in his prime creative years! Would everyone be fascinated and spellbound as the movie played out? Or would it be more of a struggle for her friends and new friends to really engage with that sort of genre? Most of the teens she had invited were girls, after all. 

    I really just hope we all have fun, Tabitha sighed. Although I guess I also hope it doesn’t wind up feeling like we’re having fun at Bobby’s expense. Talking over the movie, or poking fun at bad effects or cliches or such. I know what it’s like to really, REALLY love a movie, and then feel pretty devastated when you try to share that with someone and they’re just sort of indifferent to it or even look down on it.

    A lifetime ago she had been a little too excited to show the dark fantasy film Mirrormask to Julie and some other author friends, so they had streamed it together for their server writing circle. Her friend had found the writing unforgivably cheesy and the admittedly somewhat dated CGI effects absolutely awful, and never really was able to immerse herself in the movie.

    Man. Looking back on how I’d somehow HYPED MYSELF UP into thinking that she would somehow adore it as much as I did, and then how crushed I was by how she actually reacted to it… I still just feel so devastated! I never even replayed Mirrormask after that, and it used to be one of my absolute favorites, a real comfort food watch.

    Every time she’d considered what movie she might put in for the night and her eyes scanned across the familiar title, she had remembered Julie making fun of it and glowered with shame, embarrassment, and hurt. Then, she would always choose some other movie instead from that point on, and do her best to push all of those bad feelings down to where she could stifle them and forget. Tabitha wasn’t even sure she would ever be able to enjoy Mirrormask with the same honest innocence again now that the experience had been discolored by those other memories.

    Just you wait, Julie, Tabitha put on a pout. THIS TIME I’m going to get custody of you somehow when you’re still little. It’ll be the kind of movie you GROW UP watching, I’ll ingrain all the classics into you at a young age. Princess Bride, Labyrinth. Dark Crystal maybe, if I’m feeling particularly vindictive.

    It was a fun thought experiment for a moment, but then again the idea also soured quickly. She did want to somehow save Julie from the life she’d had before, but forcing her own movies and books on her old friend as a child felt like it was crossing some sort of line. It was just so strange to try to wrap her mind around the weird different role Tabitha was aiming to fill and what that would mean for their relationship. She still found herself determined to adopt Julie no matter what, because the alternative seemed to be leaving the girl to the fate of the life she had before.

    Which was unthinkable.

    Okay okay okay, Tabitha slapped at her own cheeks—with both hands now, which still felt like a marvelous development. I have homework. Need to lock the fuck in, Tabitha. Don’t let yourself get carried away by however the party might wind up tomorrow. There’s that stupid math assignment from the book, and if I do both odds and evens he said it’d be extra credit.

    When she did finally crack her Geometry book open and begin powering through the prescribed problems, it felt like most of her brain powered off and went dormant. The silence and solitude of the big house around her ceased to be jarring and discomforting and slipped back around her like a glove—for all that she was somehow miraculously outgoing now, that same old single-minded introvert Tabitha was still in there deep down. It just took a rather obnoxious amount of triangles to bring that old Tabby back up.

    Decide whether each set of numbers can form a triangle.

    Decide which set of numbers can NOT form a triangle.

    Two sides of a triangle have the following measures. Find the range of possible measures for the third side.

    Triangle XYZ is shown. What is the measure of angle of YZX?

    In triangle DEF, what is the measure of angle FED in degrees?

    Brian is baking a birthday cake for his friend Mia in the shape of a slice of pizza. If two sides of the pizza are 15 inches and 16 inches long, what length would NOT work for the third side?

    Tabitha knew that many were able to find a deep natural beauty in the perfect precision of mathematics… but over the course of her new life, it was actually beginning to fill her with loathing. Her mind did not feel correctly wired to appreciate the bare simplicity of these mechanical rules, and even began to resent being used as a gopher with which to resolve even the relatively easy high school equations. She was eventually able to bull on through both the odd and even problems in the book and finish writing, and in the end she clapped her pencil back down upon the different answers filling her page of notebook paper with a groan of frustration.

    Math and Science are great and I respect them and all, but I really want to say that they’re none of my business and we should just go our separate ways.

    The paper was inserted into the front pocket of her binder with care, then placed with her textbook back in her bag and carried to her room. It was already just about time to go back to the bus stop and wait for Hannah to get home from school, so she did a quick trip through the house tidying things up, then donned her coat again and headed out.

    Need to talk with Elena tomorrow about running, Tabitha reminded herself. I’m cleared for active exercise again, and it’s something I promised we’d do! Have to break in these new running shoes for real.

    There was also food for tomorrow’s impromptu party she needed to consider—but the whole event was so spur of the moment she had no idea how many people would even show up. It felt like she had cast invitations far and wide, but some part of her felt sure that either almost no one would show up—which would feel pretty devastating but should probably be expected—or too many would show up. No get together ever seemed to fall into a happy medium between the two, so logically it should either be one extreme or the other.

    Pizza? Is that boring and lame? Tabitha wondered. I do have some money left still, so we could order. My head still feels calibrated to automatically assume 2040s prices, but we’re actually in the 1990s still right now. Could get a large pizza for what, like, just ten bucks here? Feels like an absolute steal.

    She couldn’t really plan on cooking for everyone herself without having a better idea of what size group she might be hosting. Although, she also remembered that she was harboring all sorts of romantic notions about baking enormous batches of cookies for the Art Club’s art show—maybe tonight would be a good practice run? It wasn’t really a meal, but what teenager would say no to trying homebaked cookies at a party? It might be something good to snack on during the movie.

    Arriving back at the curb of the bus stop shook her mind out of finger foods and appetizers, because it made her remember how forward she’d been there on the bus. She had admitted she liked Bobby. Out loud. In front of him and a bunch of friends. That felt weird, in an alien sort of out-of-character for her to do sort of way. In her last life she had carried those sort of sentiments to her grave, but somehow today she was just so opened up that it felt like there were no barriers to keep things like that from just dropping out of her.

    “Was I too… forward?” Tabitha asked the empty street with a tinge of embarrassment and a small smile.

    She had no baseline for what might be normal there, except for how wildly different it was from her previous self. That seemed like it was part of the point, though—that prior Tabitha had grown so closed off and emotionally reclusive that she wound up in abject misery for it. Maybe she had been too forward right there in the moment, but so what? Where else was she to learn to walk, learn to run, to stumble and fall and learn to get back up if not when she was here in her youth?

    That’s just how things are, Tabitha told herself. Need to be okay with, well. PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE, even if I mess up sometimes.

    Yeah I’m going to embarrass myself now and then. Or say the wrong thing. Hurt someone’s feelings without meaning to. Probably fall in love at some point and make all sorts of stupid, rash decisions there. I’m going to be mindful as I can still, yeah—but I do still need to let myself actually TRY at things, let myself fail. Not be too terrified by the idea of failure, so scared that I never even let myself try.

    She enjoyed the self-satisfaction of feeling both wise beyond her years and at the same time justifying to allow herself to be stupid and reckless. Some small fraction of herself shared some self-aware amusement at her own folly there, but Tabitha felt too smug right now to measure the angles and determine how large or small that side of herself might be if it was a triangle.

    After all, wasn’t she endeavoring to be less cautious and calculative? She was forcing herself to be more outgoing, and a large part of that was just winging it. Once reality started slapping her in the face with the consequences of her missteps, then she would pause and rethink things. It didn’t make any sense to try to preempt the error of her future ways when she wasn’t even sure where she was going to go wrong just yet.

    Right? Tabitha paused. That sounds like it’s probably just a boatload of excuses, ‘cause I’m enjoying living in the moment right now. Is this one of those things that I’m going to be sobbing and wailing into my pillow a couple nights later over, cursing myself for how ignorant and brainless I let myself be?

    What a conundrum.

    She was a mind of questionably advanced maturity, however she seemed to be running on the hardware of a fourteen-year-old girl—all Tabitha could do right now was send sympathy to tomorrow’s Tabitha for her future regrets. Because those those regrets had not yet come to roost for her now, and she did not know them. That sane, exasperated part of her knew that this was one of those unique areas where her future experience was going to have to let her down, because she did not go through any of this in her previous lifetime.

    There’s nothing I can do but just blunder forward as best I can, Tabitha decided. Fuck. I want to put my brain back up into the OUTGOING gear again. Feels like my thoughts just cycle endlessly over nothing, IDLING—the engine is running and I’m burning fuel while getting nowhere useful at all, when I fall back into my old frame of mind. I think I’m starting to hate it.

    Hannah’s school bus appeared around the bend of the street finally, however—Tabitha could regain her seven-year-old-shaped shadow that was like an angel of innocence and enthusiasm. She could show off her freshly minted new hand, they could bake an enormous batch of cookies together, and Tabitha was even excited to do all of the dishes tonight herself now that she could put both hands in the sink water again.

( Previous, 65 pt 6 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 65 pt 8 )

/// Okay this one feels like much ado about nothing, but it's actually going to bookend her introspection for quite a while because there will be zero time for me to fit in much inner thoughts for her tomorrow with how much will be going on.

Consider this section a bit of a send off to overthinky Tabitha! Because she's been chewing on next to nothing for a long time and it's time to give her lots and lots of things to actually chew on. But hopefully not so much that she chokes! One, maybe two more sections wrapping up some last plot threads, and then we'll call chapter 65 complete.