RE: Trailer Trash 6 pt 4 (Patreon)

   “‘Lena? Honey?” Mrs. Seelbaugh’s voice called through the bedroom door. “Are you alright? I thought I heard glass breaking.”

   “You did,” Elena bit out. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

   The fourteen-year-old blonde hugged herself as she cast a hollow stare past the wreckage of her once-tidy room. She’d had a bit of an episode, and after crying and screaming into her pillow behind the locked door for several hours, Elena had decided to… redecorate. Posters had all been ripped into papery shreds as she clawed them off of her walls, and she’d crumpled the cut-out magazine sections and old middle-school artwork that had been taped up. Picture frames had been knocked down, she’d torn and thrown every book on her bookshelf, and the little decorative glass angel that normally caught the light on her windowsill had been hurled against the far wall. 

   “Elena?” Mrs. Seelbaugh prompted again. “Can I… come in?”

   “I want to be alone for a while,” Elena replied in a flat voice, slowly scratching her fingernails down her arms.

   “Okay,” Mrs. Seelbaugh replied. “I’m… I’m always here for you. Whenever you need me.”

   “Yeah,” Elena said without emotion.

   When she heard her mother reluctantly step back away from her door and leave, Elena slowly exhaled. Her eyes hurt. Her room was a total disaster, without even safe carpet space to step anywhere after she’d finished toppling everything off of her dresser, desk, and shelving unit. Worst of all, she didn’t understand why she’d done any of it, why the sudden impulse to destroy had suddenly taken hold and refused to let go.

   It’s not, like, a TANTRUM or anything, Elena glanced around with disinterest and disgust at the trashed remains of a room she’d once been proud of. It… it just… I don’t know?

   Frowning to herself, the teen wasn’t sure she could actually rationalize her actions to her parents. Elena had absolutely thrown tantrums before—even as recently as the previous school year, back when she’d still been friends with Carrie. Looking back on it now, tantrums seemed so childish. No, this today didn’t felt anything like a tantrum. It felt like madness, horror, it made her insides sick and her mind turn cold, detached, and bitter.

   Screaming hadn’t helped, it just made her throat sore. Punching her pillow and mattress was futile. Something about her bedroom itself had suddenly become absolutely abhorrent to her. The room had been too Elena, and each of the tastefully-chosen decorations throughout the room, every poster that had been picked out because of how it reflected her tastes, every picture of herself smiling with friends or family became a repulsive monument to insipid teenage vanity. Without any warning, all at once and in an overwhelmingly drastic way, Elena hated all of it.

   All of it needed to be destroyed.

   She didn’t feel better after the fact, though. Everything still felt wrong, everything still needed fixed, but she wasn’t sure what that entailed, or what that could even mean anymore. Raking her fingernails down her arms one last time, a brilliant idea came to her— inspiration. She stomped and kicked through the mess on her floor, smashing a plastic case filled with her old school supplies beneath her shoe. Crouching down over it, Elena carelessly scattered the purple plastic shards with her fingertips and picked through broken crayons in search of—there you are.

   Her good pair of scissors.

   I can cut off all my hair! Elena decided with glee. That will—that will help. It will. It will. It needs to go. The old Elena needs to fucking—

   “Elena!” Her mother’s voice called from across the house. “Mrs. Williams just called— something’s happened with Tabitha at the hospital. Can you hurry and get dressed to go?”

   No. No no no no no no, Elena felt her throat constrict. See Tabitha? No, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

   She flung the pair of scissors back into the pile junk of pulled out of her desk drawer as if they had bitten her hand, and then backpedaled unsteadily across the mess strewn about her room. Elena slipped on one of the dozens of Zoobooks that had spilled off of her lowest bookshelf and stumbled into the corner. 

   Tabitha. Something happened. She’s… she’s dead, isn’t she? Elena quaked in dread, clutching at her face as the tears returned. I. I killed her. It’s my fault I killed her I told her it was SAFE and convinced her to go EVEN THOUGH SHE DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO GO and now she’s— she’s. She’s dead. All because of me, all because I THOUGHT I FUCKING KNEW BEST. All because I thought getting closer to Matthew and us all having better standing at FUCKING HIGH SCHOOL was more important than her being absolutely fucking safe and away from everything. I—I can’t. I can’t. I CAN’T.

   Elena wasn’t aware of how many minutes had passed as she’d curled up in the corner and sobbing into her hands, but the next thing she knew comforting arms were around her because her mother was there. She flinched back in surprise at first, but Mrs. Seelbaugh wouldn’t let herself be pushed away, instead kneeling in the junk strewn across the carpet and hugging her tight.

   Right. Right. Doorknob has that line bit in the middle of it, that you can unlock from the other side with a screwdriver. I should have, should have moved the dresser. Barricaded. She knows what I did, though. Why would she even BOTHER to—?

   “We’re going to get through this, ‘Lena,” Mrs. Seelbaugh insisted. “We can do this. I don’t know that I made any sense of what Mrs. Williams was saying, but Tabitha hasn’t passed away. Okay? Not just yet. She is… she is maybe doing a little better than she was, and I think we should go and see. What do you think?”

   “Mom, it’s my fault—”

   “No. No,” Her mother disagreed. “No Elena Honey, listen to me. I know how this all must feel, but this is all on that Erica Taylor girl. She attacked Tabitha. Not you. When you try to take all the culpability for what happened and put it on yourself, you’re taking blame off of Erica Taylor. Is that what you want? Do you want her to have any less blame for what she did?”

   “...No,” Elena said through gritted teeth. She still didn’t agree with her mother, but she didn’t have the energy to fight her right here on this—her Dad was a capable attorney, and he had yet to ever win an argument against his wife.

   You don’t understand. You just don’t understand. Mom, you always understand and get everything, but this time you just DON’T. You don’t understand. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.

*     *     *

   The urge and inspiration to create something beautiful, something mesmerizing seemed to thrum through Alicia’s fingertips, but every time she put her pencil to the paper, nothing appeared on the blank space. Not so much as a scribble was conjured into being; lately her ability to create seemed to be completely stopped up. Sometimes, she would stare in frustration at the empty sheet for minutes on end, other days she would put the page away and rifle through her previous drawings in vexation. Today, she threw her pencil across the classroom.

   Okay. Okay, I can’t deal, Alicia rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. I need to… to find SOMEONE to talk to. Probably. About all of this.

   A few heads turned, and Mr. Morrison gave her a questioning glance, but Alicia had already slumped back down in her seat, cradling her face in her hands. She hadn’t shed a single tear since they all thought they’d lost Tabitha, but the urge to cry persisted just behind her eyes, lingering there, taunting her with an emotional release that just wouldn’t come out. It felt like she needed to bawl, to cry and scream and cause a fit, but the most she could manage to force out was a few ragged breaths. The sobs were still stuck, as if hung up on something deep down in her throat.

   I can’t talk to Elena about this. Not now, Alicia decided. Maybe I could NEVER talk to her about this…

   Elena hadn’t been present at school since Tabitha had been attacked. Well, the blonde was physically present; Elena attended classes, and her body occupied space within the campus grounds. But, she wasn’t there. Elena had checked out, there was no Elena spark in her at the moment, just an Elena-shaped teenage girl with a vacant expression and monosyllabic responses. Tabitha had become close with Elena, and it was normal for Elena to grieve like she was. Alicia’s relationship with Tabitha was turning out to have been a lot more hopelessly complicated.

   I... maybe have a big crush on Tabitha, Alicia struggled to admit to herself. Some... I don’t know, some weird level of attraction. Affection? I don’t think it’s SEXUAL or anything like that. Probably. She’s just—there’s just something special about her to me. Irreplaceable. COMPLETELY irreplaceable, and...

   She’d been fighting to suppress some strange, unbidden feelings for a while now—but given the circumstances, it was just impossible for Alicia not to totally fixate on Tabitha. Her red-haired friend was possibly, even probably a goddamned time-traveller from the future! In that light, every little thing the lovely teen did demanded Alicia’s complete attention. Enormous implications could possibly be gleaned from any trivial little slip of the tongue when hanging out with Tabitha. For weeks and weeks, Alicia had told herself that this was all these feelings were. Interest. Because Tabitha might really be from the future.

   But, there was more—so much more.

   Tabitha was beautiful. She had a beauty that seemed to start on the inside and bloom outwards into her actual appearance, some incredible, intangible thing that shone from deep within. Artistically speaking, Tabitha had without any doubt become Alicia’s muse in every way. The Tabitha in motion photo she’d snapped was her current masterpiece. Drawings of Tabitha’s different expressions now populated Alicia’s artbook, crowding out anything else she wanted to draw. The old guilty practice scribblings of bare breasts stashed behind her bed frame had been replaced with sketch after sketch of naked shoulders and the slender lines of a lovely neck—all distinctly Tabitha.

   That doesn’t make me a LESBO, though, Alicia scowled to herself. Right? Like, no way. I didn’t want to BE with her, or like, DO THINGS with her. Except maybe try kissing her. Okay... that’s… yeah. That’s pretty gay, I guess. Fuck!

   Alicia didn’t want to be gay, though. Having weird, fluttery warm feelings of nascent attraction for another girl—who happened to also be her best friend and in fact one of her only friends—was an awful experience. The guilt and self-doubt was compounded by the attack during the Halloween party, and it felt like her already squeezed and constrained emotions clamped down so hard that she was a smooshed mess on the inside. The only reason she was functioning any little bit better than Elena was because she’d been putting up a false front regarding Tabitha for some time now. That made her feel awful, too.

*     *     *

   “Princess… everyone hates me,” Clarissa confided. “I think I hate them back?”

   The limited edition Beanie Baby gazed down upon the teen from her glass case with her usual wisdom and grace, and Clarissa tried to imagine what the purple Bear was trying to tell her. The rows and rows of the other Beanie Babies that filled the wooden curio above her bed seemed to be judging her, and Clarissa couldn’t bear to look at them right now. She could only trust her Princess Diana Bear right now.

   “If they weren’t my real friends, then that means I wasn’t a real friend to them, either,” Clarissa said, staring up into Princess’ solemn dark plastic eyes. “Right?”

   The expulsion hearing had gone well for Clarissa. The threat of being held back a year turned out to be posturing on the school board’s part, and everyone was released from their suspensions with a stern warning about their behavior. Everyone with the exception of Chris Thompson—but, he’d actually physically attacked another student on school grounds. Of course he would get expelled. Erica Taylor wasn’t mentioned at all, and when questioned about it, her Dad had put on a grim face and said that Erica Taylor was being dealt with by people much higher up than some shitty school board meeting. After the stress and terror of being held back turned out to be a slap on the wrist and a scolding, Clarissa had returned to school that very Tuesday almost giddy with relief.

   Everything had already changed, though.

   The friendships she’d made previously were nowhere to be found—the other girls seemed amused that Clarissa would dare to talk to them, after what she’d done. They laughed at her, snubbed her, quickly outed her as the cruel bully who’d stolen that poor Tabitha girl’s notebook and gotten caught. As if they all hadn’t talked about doing it, as if they hadn’t helped goad her into doing it. Clarissa watched in indignant disbelief as each of her friendships was tested for the very first time, and each of them, every single one, failed.

   “Yeah,” Clarissa chuckled, lowering her eyes away from Princess Diana Bear. “Right. I hate ‘em. Stupid, it was all—it’s all so stupid.”

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/// Sorry for the big disappearance, I caught the sick. Protip: don't get sick. Post today, post tomorrow, probably post day after that as well as I catch up on things.