FortySixtyFour
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RE: Trailer Trash 56, 56 pt 3
🕑 Added 2024-01-26 13:15:16 +0000 UTC“Never had a real boyfriend, and… I haven’t had my first kiss yet,” Tabitha said. “I’ve been on something like dates before, but—yeah. It went awful, and I guess—I guess it kinda spooked me away from trying to, uh. Dip my toe further into all that.”
“Damn, so—” Bobby’s handsome face wore a look that was thoughtful without being judgemental. “So, you haven’t had a first kiss yet?”
“I haven’t,” Tabitha confirmed, trying to make the shrug she gave him nonchalant.
As if it didn’t matter—as if missing out on the magic and romantic side of life completely had been no big deal for her. It was easy to appear disaffected, but inside it stung. It always had. That bitter sense of loss had become a part of her, because she wanted to love, to be loved, to experience affection and give it in turn, for someone to care, really care, and for those feelings to be something they could physically express, to manifest as fantastic life-changing moments.
“Then, uh—do you want to have your first kiss?” Bobby asked.
The charming and cocky facade of his had been cracked open from the inside, and he was regarding her with a rather vulnerable look of anticipation. This would be a turning point for them, perhaps, where either they were able to open up to each other on a deeper, more meaningful level… or where Tabitha would—gently—push that playful carefree mask he usually wore back into place and the offer to kiss would just be brushed off by both of them as a joke. Banter.
“Yeah, kinda,” Tabitha gazed in his eyes, trying to savor this moment. “Just… can my first kiss be somewhere special? Not like, just here in the hallway. Maybe uh, maybe we could find somewhere a little more private?”
“Of course,” Bobby seemed to light up at her answer, and he took her by the hand.
She stared at their joined hands for a moment in awe—was everything really going so well? This all just felt right.
“W-wait,” Tabitha stammered. “This is, uh, it’s not weird, or anything?”
“What do you mean?” Bobby searched her expression.
“I guess… because I’m so much older than you,” Tabitha said with a wince. “Sorta. Because—because, yeah, I um, at one point I lived out a life until I was sixty years old, so. It’s weird. Right? I mean, I’m not sixty now, for sure, but I was, once. This doesn’t make me like, a pedo or a groomer or something? Bobby, you’re a teenager.”
“Aren’t we the same age?” Bobby seemed puzzled by her hesitance here.
“Yes, and also—no?” Tabitha was at a loss as to how to explain.
“But I mean, like—right now, we’re the same age, right?” Bobby reasoned. “And then, in the future—in the future we’d still be the same age. Over there, you’re sixty and I’m sixty. Right?”
“Yeah, but—” Tabitha paused. “But, I’m from the future, and you’re not. Right now. So…”
“Okay then, I’m from the future, too,” Bobby lied unabashedly. “I just didn’t want to tell anyone, so. Yeah. Keep it a secret for me, okay?”
“No, seriously Bobby,” Tabitha tried to withdraw her hand.
“You said you’ve never kissed anyone,” Bobby recalled. “Did you mean just now, or in both lives?”
“Both, uh,” Tabitha winced again. “Sadly.”
“Then, s’not like you’re exactly taking advantage of me or anything,” Bobby set up his argument. “You’re not like, using your future knowledge to woo me, right? To take advantage of me? You’re not leaning on your age and maturity to take advantage of things, have ill intentions or all that jazz?”
“Uhh,” Tabitha tried to think it through, but it was getting hard to concentrate. “I… guess I’m not? But still, that doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Tell you what,” Bobby gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s find the perfect spot where we can have some privacy for your first kiss, and then you can decide whether or not we wait or if we just go ahead and do it. See how the moment feels, alright?”
“Well… alright,” Tabitha nodded.
She really did want to kiss him, and maybe she was just looking forward to it too much. Was it finally her time? Would it be amazing, or would it disappoint? She needed to know.
He led her down the bustling hallway of Springton High in the direction of the quad, and the indifferent faces of the students became a blur as her eyes tracked down the length of her arm to where her hand was clasped with Bobby’s. Holding hands was… nice. She enjoyed it a lot more than she thought she would, the context of it, even just the implication that they were close enough for that kind of intimate gesture was cool. There was a level of trust there, a bond, and holding hands with a boy she was interested in just had her feeling giddy and light on her feet.
When they reached the quad area with its tables and planters it was crowded, and Tabitha wondered for an oblique moment what day it was. There were people everywhere! She was still riding that high of happiness seeded through with anticipation, so she wasn’t too bothered as Bobby gave her a helpless smile and brought her on past the back quad and towards the track and field area where the Personal Fitness class met in the mornings.
It was busy there, too—half of the bleachers were full and there were what must have been several different classes of kids out on the field doing activities of some sort. There were small cliques of people clustered here and there talking, and even scattered groups of students jogging around the track that looped around the field together. Now she felt a little dismayed. This wasn’t the right place for a perfect first kiss, either. But where was the spot that would be just right? Away from prying eyes, but also somewhere nice. Memorable.
Still hand-in-hand, they doubled back towards the quad and then tried one of the other hallways, but there were people everywhere. Talking and walking along the corridors, leaning against lockers, even when they strode past the open doors of classrooms all of the seats were full. There was just commotion everywhere, like this was some big day that Tabitha couldn’t quite recall, maybe one of those Homecoming things, or a pep rally.
“Hmm, let’s try over this way,” Bobby suggested.
They went down another one of the hallways and skirted around the Science Building all the way back towards the lunch room. Everywhere was full of people, there seemed to be no secluded spot where they could have a private moment. The cafeteria was a veritable sea of bodies, there were kids hanging out behind every corner and casually chatting along every walkway. What was going on?
Should I just ask him to kiss me? Tabitha wondered as her impatience and frustration grew.
The bus loop was full of buses and flocks of teenagers were boarding and disembarking and waiting for their bus in giant throngs. Thinking that perhaps this had cleared out the overpopulated hallways, Tabitha went back in that direction, but there were still kids everywhere, laughing and talking and joking with one another as though this was an unusually long gap between one class and the next.
Something was wrong.
She checked down another hallway, she tried the quad again, and although she could tell from outside it was full of loud people carrying on she was about to attempt peeking in the art room anyways—when she realized her hand was empty.
Bobby was gone.
Where did— Tabitha looked around in embarrassment, her frustration turning into fear and urgency. Did we get separated?
Tabitha dashed down the hallways in search of his familiar figure, his smile that always put her heart at ease—but he was nowhere to be found. She parted through the crowds first politely, and then without care of whose shoulders she bumped into or which person’s papers and books got scattered across the tile. The masses of students everywhere were starting to thin, and as Tabitha turned down this hallway and that and barged into both classrooms she knew from this lifetime and those she barely remembered from the future, she found the rooms empty.
Vacant seats and empty desks.
The background murmur of thousands of voices all speaking at once throughout the campus was dwindling to just occasional echoes down hallways in the distance. Dread was beginning to overtake her and she ran with all of her might down corridors that were sparse with people and then ones that were completely empty. Minutes later, as she rounded a bend she realized that the lights in this wing were off. Was school closed for the day?
Had she missed her chance?
Frustration and a gnawing sense of loss slowed her to a trot and then a slow walk. There was no one here—Tabitha not only couldn’t find Bobby, but now she couldn’t find anyone. What had happened?! How had she missed it—they had been holding hands! Where did he—
* * *
Tabitha woke with a jolt, still feeling adrenaline from her run through the dream. She’d had vivid nightmares and F-22 fever dreams as recently as the past couple months, but none that immediately pissed her off quite like this one, and with a single motion Tabitha swung the covers back and sat up, shoulders heaving.
“What the fuck,” Tabitha said, staring out across the darkened bedroom. “What the actual fuck.”
Furious, she got up on her knee, leaned over her pillow, and started punching it—with both hands, because she was in the final week before getting her cast removed and the twinges and aches were long since a thing of the past. She laid into the pillow with a snarl of frustration, watching the soft shape deform beneath a fist and then the blocky shape of her cast and then her fist again without finding much satisfaction in the violence.
God… DAMN IT, Tabitha swore to herself, angrily swiping tangles of hair out of her face and sitting back up. What the hell?
She had experienced a few semi-lurid dreams where she was about to kiss her old senior-year crush a few times in her past life, and even had an exceptionally sexy dream later on in her twenties. All of those were years and years and years ago though, and feeling some combination of raging hormones, her subconscious desires, and the fucked up psychology driving her current dilemma made tonight seem like her fourteen year old body had absolutely betrayed her.
Just—not cool, not fucking cool, okay? Tabitha fumed. I DECIDED no kissing until I’m sixteen. No sexy times or any of that nonsense until I’m like—twenty one. AT LEAST. Twenty one, and without involving alcohol. That way, it’s not weird. Or not as weird. It’ll always be a little weird, that’s just my life I guess. But, still—what the hell. I’m not HORNY or anything when I’m awake, so bad brains could you please just not do this to me? EVER? Yeah, okay, I have desires. But they’re like—they need some FIGURING OUT first, okay? I’m not just gonna let Bobby sweet talk me to some private spot to make out. That’s not happening!
The absolute worst part of it all was how much she had been looking forward to it. The moment in the dream just felt right, things weren’t too awkward, the mood was right, their chemistry was okay, she wasn’t terrified and her fight or flight panic response wasn’t engaging—things were working. Having that opportunity about to happen, bubbling with anticipation for it, and then having her dream devolve into nonsense that didn’t deliver was just horribly unsatisfying!
“Zero stars, zero fucking stars,” Tabitha grumbled under her breath. “Two strong thumbs down. Zero out of five, no thank you, certified rotten tomato—would not dream again.”
With a careless motion she smoothed out her pillow, readjusted her legs, and dropped her head back down. She had no idea what time of night it was, she was wide fucking awake, but also dead tired, and now had a bunch of weird thoughts that she didn’t particularly want to stew in right now. After exhaling a long breath and then groping out across the small table beside her bed, Tabitha’s found the F-22 raptor model Alicia had given her for her birthday. With care she traced her fingers along the miniature fuselage and then gave it a little pat.
“Take me down to the scrap yard city, where the junk is free and the parts are pretty~” Tabitha sung in a sleepy murmur.
Yeah. Let’s just get back to dreaming about my fighter jet. Okay? You hear that, bad brains? That last one where I had it, I think I maybe crashed it or lost it in a tail spin or something. Can we just go back to working on fixing up my F-22, please? Let’s have THOSE dreams again. I don’t want to dwell about dream symbolism, or dating, or bizarro age difference paradoxes—hard pass on all that. HARD PASS. Just, please, just let me be a simple fourteen year old girl.
The room was filled with stifling silence, and although she waited and waited, Tabitha did not fall right back asleep.
“Holding hands is probably okay at fourteen or fifteen, right?” Her voice muttered into the darkness. “That’s not… super weird or awful. Holding hands, yeah. Hugging? Maybe. Any of that stuff with bases, touching or copping a feel or getting grabby with each other—nope. Nope nope nope, shot right outta the comfort zone and like, into the stratosphere of nope. Feels like a hard personal boundary, there, that might need time with like, a therapist to start working through. We uhh, we can revisit all of that when I’m way way older. Or never. Whichever comes first.”
( Previous, 56 pt Drive Thru | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 56 pt 4 )
/// RE:TT aims at being do-over fic genre subversion—in most every do over fiction of this nature, it's a guy main character, who is just without compunction banging all of the girls at his high school left and right with his fantastical future sex experience skills and insane confidence and the benefit of hindsight on everything regarding relationships and dating.
He also would casually defeat the school bullies who tried to give him trouble, and would invest in stocks using future knowledge that somehow paid out huge and immediate dividends, and generally find effortless success while wowing everyone with all of his innovative endeavors.
Comments
Jacob Bissey
That's one thing I like about Tabitha, she's more focused on having a good life "this time" rather than on fixing her old one since the old one is gone and was never fixable.
Jacob Bissey
I briefly entertained the idea of writing a do-over story. My subversion was going to be that I (because this was absolutely going to be a self-insert) would find a way to convince my parents that this had occurred as quickly as possible so THEY could invest on my behalf since a ten year old can't buy stocks, that way I'd already be rich by the time I turned 18, not sure if that really counts as a subversion, though. I had a few ideas in mind for specific scenes, one of the more important ones being finding my girlfriend a few years early, show up with a bunch of money, warn her about her ex before she got with him, and be like "in a few years we would have met, fallen in love, and started planning a future together, then I got sent back to when I was 10 in 2006, I used my future knowledge to get rich and now I want to make sure you are taken care of, nonpressure to start a romance, you aren't the woman I fell in love with yet, and if I can save you from the hardships that are coming up you won't be, and I'm not the man you would have fallen in love with anymore either. Regardless, I've set up a trust in your name to ensure you are taken care of for the rest of your life whether you ever see me again or not, but I would very much appreciate the opportunity to get to know one another and see if anything comes of it this go around." Not sure what I'd do for a plot because if I regressed to my younger self with all my memories of the present, my focus wouldn't be on "fixing" anything, as simply by existing with future knowledge I wouldn't live the same life, so my focus would be more on moving forward with my new future than on trying to fix a past that would still be just as gone as it normally is. I'd leverage my future knowledge to create the sort of life I always wanted, I'd try to meet my friends sooner to have more time with them, and I'd make sure my girlfriend was taken care of whether anything happened with her or not, other than that I'd just want to live my life and see where it goes, doing what I want in the moment, which is more or less what I'm doing now, just with a ton of debt and a job that I have to do. You can't fix the past, only forge a better future, even if you regressed and got a "do-over".
Alexander Hoem Rosbach
In regards to your end comment, I agree fully. The reason your do-over story is so amazing is due to your focus on the personal and inter- personal challenges you present. It's a refreshing read.
Stephen Paynter
A published "do-over" story with a difference is "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Clare North (available on Amazon). That one explores what multiple do-overs would be like, especially if there were some others who were also repeatedly doing-over their lives.
Stephen Paynter
For what it is worth, this is by far the best do-over story I've ever found. Prior to this it was Don Lockwood's "Rewind" (which, alas, is abandoned, but still unfinished). "Rewind" is not a subversion, but the writer does tend to like sweet romantic plots. (Available on storiesonline, and probably elsewhere too.)
Stephen Paynter
I've vaguely thought about writing a do-over story which subverted the do-over trope of beating up the school bully with future fighting skills. In my subversion, the do-over guy would be too violent and end up totally wrecking his life. ... It doesn't seem like enough of a reason to write a do-over story though!
Chris Myers
Surprisingly, I actually thought it was was a dream for the first few sentences, but decided it wasn't when Tabitha described Bobby's vulnerable expression... and then found myself re-figuring it out much later on. Nice job.
Jeanie6754
Good job. I wondered if had missed something too but it was in the middle of it that I realized it was a dream. Loved this section. Great job. Certified Frosty. Have a good day try and get some rest. Don't let anyone tell you you aren't a great person 🥰
Sean
The beginning convo had me wondering if I missed a section, the finding a spot part had me wondering about the logistics of a school that full, and the ending made me happy because I've totally had dreams where I just immediately disassociate from it and recognize the auto generator just sent me nonsense lol. What a chapter to wake up to lol, I was questioning everything by the end.
Undead Writer
Same! Would love to hear about other novels that you recommend!
Undead Writer
They had us in the first part, not going to lie. Lol. I though we were finally moving forward but I find it so funny that it’s a dream XD. So excited to see another chapter of my favorite novel!
Jojiro
Do you have any personal do-over fic recommendations? Eve if they aren't subversions? Cuz this is the first one of it's sort I've read in the realistic fiction genre. Everything else I've seen has been like...Narutoverse fix-it or HP-verse fix-it.
Kettle
Speaking to the author's note, I know this is supposed to be a "do-over" genre, but I love it because it is going over a lot of my childhood trauma from an adult perspective. I don't think I would like it nearly as much if it was another generic "super teen" book. There are a few places I cried and was like "oh, that is an unresolved childhood issue". Especially with Tabby's relationship to her parents.
WarStrider72
Thanks for the update boss!
