RE: Trailer Trash pt 11 (Patreon)

(pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7, pt 8, pt 8a, pt 9, pt 10)

   “Uhhh. Is this the right stop?” Alicia hesitated on the steps off of the school bus. She’d been chatting with Tabitha about designs for her goblin story and somehow entirely lost track of the surroundings passing by the bus windows outside. 

   “Yep, this is our stop,” Tabitha confirmed, waving Alicia forward with an excited smile.

   “This... is a trailer park,” Alicia pointed out, uneasily stepping down from the school bus.

   It wasn’t a nice-looking trailer park, either. Alicia had an aunt that lived in a mobile home lot in Georgia, but those ones were all new homes, painted uniformly and arranged neatly onto their picture-perfect manicured little lawns. This lot that Tabitha had taken her to was as close as Springton had to a ghetto, the sort of slummy, broken-down place that spoke of a lifetime of mistakes.

   Dilapidated trailers were packed together in claustrophobic rows, stretching on down the hill behind a gas station and a liquor store. Garbage was everywhere; discarded trash, sagging waterlogged fast food cartons and cups, unidentifiable broken pieces of plastic, and rusting metal parts littered the sides of street. Lawns consisting of clumps weeds seemed popular, while bare, sunbaked dirt patches scattered with cigarette butts and gravel were also apparently in vogue in this neighborhood. 

   The trailers themselves were obviously, visibly run-down. Some had doors boarded up with plywood already black with mold, others sported roofs covered with tarps or  trashbags. Broken glass in windows, with duct tape applied haphazardly across the spiderweb of cracks. There were trailers with sagging panelling, trailers filthy with grime, and even an abandoned, gutted one that looked like it had become a playhouse for neighborhood kids. Or possibly drug addicts.

   “You... live in a trailer park?” Alicia asked, turning to cast a doubtful look in Tabitha’s direction.

   “Surprised?” Tabitha gave her a knowing smile.

   “Yeah. I mean, kinda,” Alicia took another look around. “You’re for real? Not messing around?”

   “Oh, c’mon, it’s not that bad,” Tabitha teased. “Now hurry up, let’s get inside—I don’t wanna get mugged today.”

   “Har, har,” Alicia gave her a sarcastic snort. She stopped in place a moment later, giving Tabitha an unsure look. “...Has anyone here ever actually mugged you?”

   “Of course not,” Tabitha laughed. “I’ve lived here my whole life—well, sorta, anyways—so, everyone here already knows I’m dirt poor. I don’t have anything worth taking.”

   “Um. You’re still a pretty young lady, though… you know?” Alicia said in a pointed tone. Be a little self-aware of what could happen to you, please? Mom might not even want to drive in here to pick me up. This whole place screams all kinds of bad news.

   “Damn, you’re right,” Tabitha said sheepishly, and the redhead smacked her forehead into her palm. “I keep forgetting about that.”

   “Please be careful,” Alicia let out a nervous chuckle as she looked around, not sure if they were joking or not.

   “Yeah, no kidding,” Tabitha nodded. “Hah. C’mon, this way.”

   Still. Dirt poor, huh? Thumbs hooked into the straps of her backpack, Alicia couldn’t help but reevaluate Tabitha as she followed the redhead down the narrow lane between the rows of trailers. Nothing at all she thought she knew about the girl had ever hinted that Tabitha grew up in this sort of poverty. The most beautiful white girl in all of Springton High comes home every day... to THIS? This is the rest of her life?

   “Here we are,” Tabitha said, heading up the steps of a rather nondescript trailer.

   ...Huh. It looked as shabby as the others, and Alicia awkwardly wondered if she was expected to remark on how nice it was, make some sort of polite observation. Unable to think of anything to say, Alicia pressed her lips into the thin line of a forced smile and followed her friend up the concrete steps and into the worn-down mobile home.

   “Dad? Mother? As we discussed yesterday, I’ve brought a friend home with me from school,” Tabitha announced. “Her name is Alicia Brooks. Please treat her respectfully, and make her feel at home.”

   That’s… a weird way to phrase it? Alicia tried not to feel on edge. ‘As we discussed?’ 

   The interior of the double-wide wasn’t as bad as Alicia feared. Their living room was a neat, tidy area, without any of the cluttered furnishings or mess she’d expected. Worn but well-cared-for furniture, sparse but tasteful decor, a recently cleaned carpet, and wide-open window views gave the illusion of having a much larger open space.

   Tabitha’s parents were both home today and sitting around the TV—an older man with a forgettable face who looked like a blue-collar extra in a movie, and a fat, rather unfriendly-looking wife.

   “Hi,” Alicia gave Mr. and Mrs. Moore a meek wave. Oh shit. I thought they would seem more like Tabitha, or something. They look like… generic rednecks? Racist maybe? Is my skin color gonna be a weird issue?

   “Nice to meet you, Alicia,” the father got up out of his seat to shake her hand.

   “Hello,” Mrs. Moore didn’t rise out of her seat on the sofa, instead giving Alicia a lingering glance before turning to give Tabitha a scathing look.

   Oh shit. Oh shit.

   “Here,” Tabitha called, pulling two chairs out at their dining room table. “I’m sorry there aren’t more places to sit. Would you like anything to drink?”

   “I’m good, thanks,” Alicia said, placing her bag on the table and settling into the seat. Nothing about this visit had gone like she thought it would—she’d pictured a nice, upscale house in a suburb somewhere. Good-looking parents, maybe ones with some light-hearted sense of humor to help put their daughter’s friend at ease and make her feel more welcome. Why can’t anything ever be like it is on TV?

   Mr. Moore returned to his chair, and the trailer went quiet.

   “I uh, I read through that whole masonry book you gave me last night,” Alicia spoke up. Even if tense silence was situation normal for this family, it felt incredibly straining on her as their guest. “Art of the Stonemason. Well, kinda. I definitely didn’t read any of it, but I studied all the diagrams and everything.”

   “Oh?” Tabitha’s eyes lit up with interest. “Was it helpful at all?”

   “Oh my God, yes,” Alicia nodded emphatically. “I was… well, you know. I draw people and expressions mostly, I was never interested in drawing walls—until now.”

   “If slaves are doing all the actual labor, they wouldn’t have the uh, modern, perfectly-squared off bricks that fit all nicely together. They’d have to take each random rock, chip away all the weak parts, protrusions or what-have-you, and then fit all these different-sized pieces together somehow with mortar so that it’s structurally sound.

   “There’s so many aspects I’d have never even thought about ‘til going through that book. Thinking about it in terms of structure, figuring abutments, springers, and a keystone when you form stone arches—and you’re gonna want arches—thinking about using longer stones as corbels to support weight, that kinda thing. Here, look at my new doodles,” Alicia said, opening up her current sketchpad and sliding it across the table.

   “These are amazing,” Tabitha praised, tracing her fingers along the paper with reverence. “They look so much more... real.”

   “Right? That book really helped me start thinking of each piece as its own three-dimensional thing. Like, it’s made of all of these mismatched components, but everything still fits together in a certain special way. Matching up rubble with uneven joins so that they’re all in their courses, spacing out what they call perpend stones, or through-stones, to keep the pilings from shifting away from one another… there’s so many little details that got put into stuff back then that you just don’t see with boring cinderblock kinda stuff today—I never realized how cool this kinda thing would be to design and draw.

   “I mean, I was always doing that generic, boring, flat surface with overlapping rectangles brick pattern for things ‘till just last night, when I read through that book. Is there gonna be a whole lot of this kinda stuff in your story?”

   “There is!” Tabitha nodded. “The second book will feature stoneworking throughout its plot! The mages, they had their goblins build up these labyrinths around the leylines—labyrinths designed in a specific way, so that everything from the mana spring gets focused and channeled along onto this one singular, specific path.

   “But, the free goblins hide out there, break down some walls and build up others, messing everything up and turning the labyrinth into this huge, sprawling maze. So, not only do the mages have to deal with navigating this underground deathtrap full of rebel goblins, they have to figure out which exact walls to repair and which to tear down to restore the proper magic flow.”

   “I understand less an’ less o’ that conversation the more I overhear,” Tabitha’s father commented, turning from his seat to give each of the girls a baffled look. “What’s all this about goblins, now?”

   “They’re, you know—they’re part of Tabitha’s story?” Alicia tilted her head and gave the man a quizzical smile.

   “Her what, now?” For some reason, he looked more confused than ever.

   Does Tabitha never talk about her interests with them? Alicia looked from Tabitha to the girl’s parents and back again, hoping she hadn’t committed some sort of unknowing faux pas.

   “Oh, um. Yes, I’m working on writing a novel,” Tabitha admitted.

   “Hah,” Tabitha’s mother barked out a short, humorless laugh. “Of course she is.”

   Before anyone else could say anything, Mrs. Moore heaved herself up from the sofa and left the room, shaking her head and muttering under her breath. The woman had looked agitated to begin with, but Alicia couldn’t piece together exactly what had happened, or what particular choice of words had suddenly set her off.

   So—okay, what the hell? Alicia turned to her friend for answers, but all she saw was a conflicted look as Tabitha bit her lower lip in frustration.

   “You’re writing a story with goblins?” Mr. Moore sounded like this was news to him. “I tried reading that Hobbit book when I was ‘round your age, but I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. That stuff sure is popular as all get out, though—fellow that wrote that must be a bigshot millionaire by now.”

   “That would be John Ronald Reuel Tolkien,” Tabitha clarified in a wistful voice. “He passed away in nineteen seventy-three. I’ve been a longtime admirer of his work—I would kill to possess even one-hundredth of his talent.”

   “Huh... is that right?” Her father nodded, already distracting himself with the television in front of him again.

   ...Are these people actually even related to Tabitha? Alicia blinked in disbelief. Is this really her family? There didn’t seem to be a single shared trait between them. While Alicia felt uncomfortably out of place in this weird, kinda messed-up situation, what struck her the most was that Tabitha seemed even more out of place.

   “You’re a very strange girl,” Alicia blurted out before she could stop herself. Ah, crap.

   “Oh?” Tabitha winced and gave her an apologetic smile. “Yeah... sorry.”

   “She sure is,” Mr. Moore chuckled. “But, we love ‘er anyways.”

   Well, at least one of you does, Alicia thought, glancing over to the hallway Mrs. Moore had disappeared down.

   “Um… anyways, I’ve been spending every day this month practicing martial arts, over in the empty area on the other end of the trailer park,” Tabitha forcibly changed topics. “Do you want to come see?”

   “You know martial arts?” Alicia asked, raising her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure if any random new thing this girl said should surprise her anymore.

   “Yes,” Tabitha said, looking embarrassed. “I mean, I practice a little bit.”

   “Sounds like you’re gonna be my volunteer model for whenever I need a cool action pose, then,” Alicia decided, grinning and flipping her sketchbook to a fresh page. “Perfect, I’ve got my camera in my bag today, too!”

(pt 12)

/// The missing part 11. I still feel like the words I'm trying to string together I'm coming out stilted as hell, any comments or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.