RE: Trailer Trash 64 pt 2

/// Happy Thanksgiving!

    Without the weight of the cast encasing her arm Tabitha felt extraordinarily light on her feet, and there was pep in her step as she bounded down the silent walkways of the school campus. From the last glance she’d taken at the clock built into the Acura’s dashboard the school day here was somewhere in the middle of third period, so she was heading in that direction—Marisa from her first period Personal Fitness class was also in that one with her, so she would be able to catch up with her right away.

    Then, at lunch I’ll stop by the usual table and invite ‘Licia and ‘Lena to come by this weekend, Tabitha decided. Just a quick stop though, because I need to make sure I find the Tiffany and Grace and invite them, too. And, Bobby! In case he’s not at the table with ‘Licia and ‘Lena. Vanessa I’ll see in sixth period, and I can invite her then.

    The storm of drama and conflict with the cheerleaders still seemed to rumble with ominous portents overhead, but since today was Friday a break in the dark clouds was appearing. Tabitha was going to ensure her weekend was nothing but celebrating with friends and reconnecting with family. She would have a big living room get-together on Saturday with popcorn and maybe chips while they watched this Willow movie Bobby was so excited for, and then she was planning to spend that night instead at her old home in the trailer court so that she could spend some time with her mother. That way, Sunday morning she could walk over and see her goblin brats and maybe take them to the playground.

    I can maybe run around and play with them A BIT, Tabitha decided as she navigated her way down empty school walkways. So long as I don’t use my weaker hand, things should be fine. It’ll be a nice HANDICAP for them! To see how I fare against them with one arm metaphorically tied behind my back! Hehehe…

    The arm in question felt unquestionably liberated, and Tabitha enjoyed being able to feel the sensation of her hoodie’s long sleeve sliding against the bare skin of her wrist. Her new habit was twisting and working that wrist, closing her fingers into a tight fist and then splaying them out to stretch everything. There were twinges of discomfort and phantom aches of protest there as she was pushing muscles back into motion that had been forced still and dormant for months, but most of all it simply felt great.

    Plus, my head got cleared for duty again! Tabitha couldn’t help but beam. They said I can exercise and be active again—in moderation. And, that I should wear a helmet if I do anything more physical like biking or such, but honestly I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to do that anyways if you’re under eighteen. Or, maybe actually the Kentucky legislature for that only passed in the 2030s? You’re in the nineties still, Tabitha!

    Before she knew it, she had arrived at the portable where her third period Geometry class was. When she swung open the door and entered, Tabitha felt her face heat up as the entire class looked up from their worksheets to eyeball her. There were a few smirks and several scowls, but most of the class reacted to her sudden intrusion with disinterest and returned to their assignment. Marisa sat up in her seat near Tabitha’s vacant one and all but wriggled with urgency and excitement.

    “You have a slip?” The teacher asked with a glance of indifference.

    “Yeah, sorry,” Tabitha hurried over to his desk.

    Drawing the doctor’s note out of her pocket and unfolding it was child’s play now that she had two working hands! It was amazing to marvel at what a difference having both hands in play again made to every trivial little aspect of her life. She could wash dishes on her own again. Tie her shoelaces in a matter of seconds. Tabitha could multitask, she could hold objects with one hand while having the other free to gesture, or scratch itches, or hold things steady.

    “I got my cast off!” Tabitha couldn’t help but blurt out as her math teacher peered down his glasses at the contents of the offered paper. “Finally.”

    “Hey, good for you,” He actually put in effort to sound less apathetic, which impressed her. “We’re solving for triangles. Here, worksheet for you. This one was due by the end of class, but you can hand it in on Monday—I’ll mark you down for Monday. There’s also homework for over the weekend from the book, third period is doing all the odd problems, or you can do even and odd for extra credit. Page numbers are up on the board, there. Also due on Monday, so make sure you get it all written down.”

    “I—I will, thank you,” Tabitha bowed her head as he returned her doctor’s note and also passed her a worksheet.

    As she shuffled over to her seat, Marisa pantomimed clapping in applause for Tabitha getting her cast off and gave her silent thumbs up with a big smile—the classroom was too quiet for the girl to interrupt everyone by saying anything out loud. Tabitha returned an embarrassed smile but also shoved back her sleeve to show off her healed hand, because while her own enthusiasm had her feeling bubbly, seeing her friends just as thrilled for her made Tabitha ecstatic. At this point, nothing in this world could bring down her cheery mood!

    Though the worksheet certainly tried.

    The Geometry assignment was one of those ghastly bad photocopy of a photocopy of an already blurry printout like many school worksheets were back in the nineties, and though Tabitha saw that the angles of the many tiny triangles in the problems were labeled clearly enough—mostly—she had to squint her eyes hard and really puzzle out the rest. She could probably determine what each of the smudgy miniscule lines of text were for asking for the questions, but it would also take some guesswork and outright leaps of faith.

    I really lament for futures past, where I could just CTRL + PLUS to zoom in and make tiny illegible text big enough to read on assignments, Tabitha sighed. All of this ‘physical paper copies of assignments’ stuff was fun at first, but the novelty of it all wore away really fast.

    To her annoyance, there were forty problems squeezed onto the single sided sheet of this page, and coupling that with additional weekend homework seemed like blatant overkill to teach concepts like triangle inequality and angle sum theory. Repetition was the mother of learning, but as a returner to this timeline already Tabitha was finding a lot of the highschool material turning into absolute chores to complete. Plying her advanced knowledge to different subjects to breeze through everything at speed was only something she could do for certain classes. With courses with sadistic teachers like here with Geometry, it was as if he was trying to keep everyone as occupied as possible with useless make-work just because he could!

    You either know how to do them, or you don’t! Tabitha hid an exasperated smile. No need to beat us over the head with busywork for it!

    Still, Tabitha saw this as a challenge. Despite arriving ten minutes before the end of class and everyone else getting a big headstart, she raced through solving each of the problems and finished the entire thing with just moments to spare. Her brain felt a bit overworked and frazzled, but she was also very proud of herself for catching up to everyone, and she passed her paper forward with the rest of her row rather than turning it in on Monday.

    In the scant few minutes before the bell for lunch would ring everyone was free to chat so long as they weren’t too loud or disruptive, and so Marisa immediately turned sideways in her seat and leaned in close so they could talk.

    “Tabitha!” Marisa whispered. “Oh my God. This time all of the cheerleaders came by the field this morning. To protest. It was this big huge thing. All of them were talking down on you and Elena both, and then Vanessa ran up to interrupt, and they all got into it for a bit! We were supposed to be walking ‘round and like, doing our loop around the track but Tiffany pretends she’s tying her shoe so that we can listen in, and oh my God...”

    “Never a dull moment, huh?” Tabitha giggled, rolling her eyes. “I’m glad they’re all having fun, at least? How are they all allowed to come bother other classes in the morning?! And, it’s like—really? The two of them are the ones who stole from me.”

    “I know, right?!” Marisa agreed with fervor. “They were going on and on about all the rumors about you, or saying that you’re just out to get the whole team, or like you’re going to get them shut down if you can’t join. I don’t know what B.S. Desiree and and Faith have been feeding Heather. I liked Heather, I thought she was cool, I thought she woulda been above all of this! Nope. Guess not. Hah…”

   “Well, I’m sorry I missed out on all the drama,” Tabitha chuckled. “Oh, but hey! Are you busy this weekend? I wanted to have a little get together to celebrate getting my cast off. Bobby, my friends Alicia and Elena, you girls from Personal Fitness. Thought we could watch a movie, eat. Hang out, that sorta thing. Saturday?”

    “Uhhh maybe?” Marisa blinked. “Where do you live? What time?”

    “I can write down the address, and like—I dunno, we could meet up noonish?” Tabitha shrugged as she fished out a blank sheet of notebook paper. “So that we can sleep in. Since, weekend. Bobby really wants us all to see Willow. It’s this old eighties movie he got me for my birthday.”

    “Oh, cool,” Marisa nodded. “Willow. I don’t… think that I’ve seen it? The only Willow I know is from Buffy.”

    “Here,” Tabitha wrote out the Macintire address. “And then—here, the number there. If you can’t get a ride, let me know whenever and I’ll try to figure something out.”

    “I might be able to walk it?” Marisa said. “I’m living with my grandparents now, we’re off like back behind State street. Like—do you know where State street is?”

    “Oh yeah,” Tabitha nodded, passing her the phone number. “That’s… hmm. I mean you could walk it, but that’s a long walk? We’ll see. Do you have a bike, or anything?”

    “Nah,” Marisa shook her head. “I had one yeah, but it’s not here at my grandparent’s.”

    “No worries,” Tabitha assured her. “Call me tonight, or if I can get your number, I can call you? If Elena can go, her mom’ll probably be cool with swinging by and picking you up too. Her mom’s super cool.”

    “Sure—yeah,” Marisa tore the bottom off of the paper with Tabitha’s number so that she could write her own number to give. “Here. Uh, should I bring anything? Chips or pop or something?”

    “If you want to?” Tabitha said. “Not mandatory or anything, I’m just kinda throwing plans together last minute and I’m sure we can—”

    The lunch bell resounded across the school intercom speakers in that familiar bmmm bmmm bmmm bmmm, and the third period Geometry class all lurched up from their seats, shouldering backpacks and gathering their books.

    “—I’m sure we can figure out something!” Tabitha finished. “Or like, if everyone’s hungry I can just cook! That’d be cool. Uh hey, do you happen to know where Tiff and Grace sit at lunch?”

( Previous, 64 pt 1 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 64 pt 3 )

/// It's easy to skip past a lot of the mundane dreary moments like having to do assignments, but I do want to go into a small amount of detail about them every once in a while, just so that readers can relive some of that pain. Everyone daydreams about going back in time, but nobody remembers how much of that time was spent doing bullshit busywork worksheets. Your brain omits those memories, it has to simply to protect your sanity.

Tabitha's pretty upbeat here, we're taking the Tabitha's a weirdo with no friends narrative the cheer squad is trying to push, and crashing it with no survivors. Because she's having a kinda big get together with her friends over the weekend, and only cool kids do that.