RE, page 10
“Okay.”
“Okay? You’re interested?”
“Um. No, I don’t know yet. I mean, okay; keep talking.”
“Alright, my first project is called Goblina. In the story, everyone has magic, but everyone who isn’t able to use magic becomes deformed by it. They’re considered goblins, and either cast out of society to live like savages, or they become slaves and servants. If you’re a goblin, there’s no way to escape a life of servitude and total inferiority, no way to oppose the Magi.”
“Right. Magi. So, obviously, your story is actually about someone opposing and then overcoming them,” Alicia deduced.
“Exactly!” Tabitha beamed. “It’s the most suggestive theme I can sell to a young adult audience. I want to use allegory to illustrate the struggle of taking that final step of personal growth out of your parents’ influence to stand on your own as a person.”
“Uh… wow,” Alicia admitted.
“Is it no good?”
“No, it’s just—that’s a lot to take in, all at once,” Alicia said, not wanting to admit she didn’t know exactly what ‘allegory’ meant. I know what ALLEGATION means, thanks to dear old President Clinton, but…
“Yeah, it’s… more and more complicated, the deeper you get into it,” Tabitha admitted, patting the binder full of notes she’d organized with a guilty look. “I have pages and pages of rules on how magic works, and the way the Mage’s society and culture fits together, and… a lot of other things.
“Oh! I’m not going to dump all of the exposition on the reader like that, though,” Tabitha assured her.
“Our protagonist will be the lowest of the low—beneath the slaves, even. Everyone refers to her as a goblin. She starts with nothing, and we learn bits and pieces of everything along the way as she does. By the end, clever readers will be able to piece it all together, but it should still be a compelling story, even for those who don’t.”
“Okay, the main character. She’s a goblin?” Alicia asked, trying to figure out what Tabitha wanted drawn. “What’s she like?”
“She’s me,” Tabitha said, giving Alicia a slightly embarrassed look. “She’s, uh. She’s always been me. I’m the goblin. I’ve always been the goblin.”
“You’re the goblin,” Alicia repeated, giving the beautiful redhead an incredulous look. “In the story, you’re the goblin, and you triumph over all these Magi?”
“I… I will,” Tabitha gave her a strange look of resolve, for some reason, further confounding Alicia. “This time, I will for sure.”
Sounds terrible. Alicia somehow stopped herself from making a face. Like YOU of all people need some self-insert power fantasy, where you impress everyone and save the day.
“It’s neat and everything, but I’m probably gonna pass.” Alicia turned her down as diplomatically as she could. “I’m not really into all that kind of stuff.”
“Oh. I… yeah, that’s fine. I totally understand. Would you want to… be friends, instead?” Tabitha asked, in what seemed a lot to Alicia like a shy voice. “I think it’d be really cool to hang out with someone my own age, for once.”
Of course you don’t hang out with people your age. For a moment, Alicia couldn’t help but imagine this sophisticated-looking redhead climbing into the car of some college-age boyfriend that she surely had. Going to busy house parties, or bustling nightclubs, whatever it was girls like her did with their nights. Are there even clubs anywhere near Springton?
“I can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not,” Alicia answered carefully.
“Messing with you?” Tabitha looked surprised. “No, I’m not. Not at all. Was it a weird thing to ask?”
“I don’t know,” Alicia answered honestly. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”
Is this part of your rich white girl fantasy, having a black friend as your little sidekick? I don’t know you, I don’t WANT to know you, and I’m not comfortable around girls that are like you.
“I feel like we could be… something like kindred spirits,” Tabitha said. “Hometown heroes.”
“Hometown heroes,” Alicia repeated in disbelief. She’d had no idea what to expect from this conversation anymore, and found herself completely bewildered. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know.” Tabitha gave her a laugh and an exasperated shrug. “I never really knew. It means us, I guess?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an extremely strange individual?” Alicia asked, trying not to lose her cool. Does she think her little quirky act is cute? Does it make all her normal friends laugh and fawn all over her?
“No,” Tabitha said, looking down. “I… um. Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, that was a weird thing to say. If you ever want to talk, or hang out, or show me your drawings or anything, I hide myself in the library every lunch period. Corner table. Sorry for taking up your time.”
“Yeah, bye,” Alicia muttered to herself, watching Tabitha gather her things and get up from the table. What the hell is her deal?
I never bought in to high schools having that stereotypical social strata thing going on… but there are exceptions, and she definitely has to be one of them. Tabitha’s the prom queen type, I’m sure she’s gonna wind up head cheerleader or something—but she’s pretending she’s not. What’s her sudden fixation with me? Why fantasy nonsense with magic and goblins? Does she think I’m a geek because I draw, or something?
* * *
“Tabitha Moore? Didja know they used to call her Tubby Tabby?”
Cheek resting in her palm, Alicia was gazing out the window, daydreaming, when she heard her classmates talking. It had been several days since that unusual talk with Tabitha, and she'd almost put it out of her mind. Snapping out of her reverie, Alicia glanced over at the other students. Three girls had turned away from the rest of the class and were caught up in their own conversation. Alicia turned her attention to her sketchbook, scribbling out a doodle as she listened in.
“Why, was she fat?”
“She was so fat. Apparently, she went and got lipo over the summer. I guess she used to be like, two hundred pounds heavier, back in middle school?”
“Two hundred pounds? Christ. Did she go to Springton Middle?”
“Nah, I think I heard it was Laurel. Carrie used to have class with her, she said Tabby was basically the class retard.”
“Haha, nice. So, what, her parents bought her lipo and a nose-job? Damn, wish my parents were rich. Must be nice.”
“Next time you see her, be all like, how’s it goin’, Tubby Tabby? Bet she hates that.”
“She should’ve had them put all the fat they took out back into her boobs. I heard you can do that?”
“Damn, really? That’s dumb of her, then, ‘cause for how all high and mighty she’s always acting, she’s just basic now, you know? She’s not all that.”
“Well, you gotta consider she used to be all fat hog. I’d want all of the fat out for good too, if I was like that.”
“Not me. I’d put it in my boobs.”
“Betcha I know why she’s nowhere to be seen ‘round lunchtime. You know—she’s gotta be all blueergh!”
“Hey, gotta keep the pounds off somehow, right? Haha.”
“Bleeeurgh!”
Lunchtime? Alicia glanced up to see that one of the girls was leaning forward over her desk, miming a finger down her throat to induce vomiting. Wasn’t Tabitha supposedly hiding out in the library?
“Cut it out, that’s so gross. I heard when you do that, your breath’s permanently like, puke-breath. Is it really so hard to just not eat garbage all the time?”
They were freshman girls, and Alicia wasn’t particularly surprised to hear them being catty… but it did pique her curiosity once she realized they were talking about Tabitha. Which was fine. Alicia didn’t particularly like that girl either. Oddly enough, though, there was no mention of Tabitha being eccentric, or pursuing strange interests—topics that Alicia felt would have bubbled to the surface of their gossip right away.
…Have any of these girls ever even spoken to Tabitha?
* * *
Later that day, Alicia found herself wandering away from the direction of the lunch line and over to the hall that led down toward the library. She wasn’t that hungry, and the routine of waiting in line, getting her food, and finding a place to eat was starting to feel mechanical already, and they were still only in their first week of school.
Springton High’s library center was large, the center area consisting of a small computer lab next to a series of long tables for students to sit at, which were flanked in all directions by tall rows of bookshelves. True to her word, Tabitha was hiding at the corner table behind a comical pile of books that had to be at over a foot high. The only other students in the library were a few kids playing Oregon Trail or solitaire on the computers.
“Oh, hi!” Tabitha seemed to light up upon seeing her come in, and she slid a small pile of books to the side and out of the way. “You came!”
There was something off between Tabitha’s image and how she acted. She was putting off a friendly vibe, but it didn’t quite have any of the confidence Alicia would have expected to it. With a twinge of guilt, Alicia had to wonder how many of the rumors flying around about this girl were based entirely on everyone’s preconceptions.
“Hi,” Alicia said, casually striding over. None of the books on the table looked like fantasy novels. “You really were hiding in here. Reading… uh… the 1996 Emergency Response Guidebook? And, this here… Law enforcement field guide? Practice and Procedure; the Police Operational Handbook?”
“Er… yeah,” Tabitha looked guilty. “I was doing a little bit of research.”
“On what?” Alicia asked incredulously.
“If someone got hurt, and I had access to a police radio, I’ll know how to call it in,” Tabitha tried to explain. “You know. Just in case.”
“…Wouldn’t the police officer normally do that?” Alicia gave the girl a strange look. “I think they keep their radios like, on them. All the time. They have that little shoulder thing?”
“You’re right.” Tabitha winced. “That would be ideal, yes. Silly of me.”
“Did you give up on your fantasy novel idea already?” Alicia asked. She seems so… flighty? Maybe she just doesn’t have a whole lot of common sense, and she latches on to these ideas of hers in a weird way. I think there’s a name for people who’re like that.
“I… haven’t given up,” Tabitha said with some difficulty. “It’s just. I can’t focus lately. At all. There’s too much going on.”
“Like what?” Alicia slid out the chair opposite Tabitha, and decided to take a seat. Hot white girl problems? All these people talking about you behind your back?
“I think… no, I’m sure that my uncle is going to be sentenced to prison in the near future,” Tabitha began. “His children—my cousins, I spend a lot of time with them, and I like to think they look up to me. I don’t know what I can do for them, but at the same time, I can’t stand standing by and doing nothing.”
Huh, Alicia thought, surprised. THAT certainly came out of nowhere.
“Also… my mother and I haven’t actually spoken to each other since the first day of school. We had an argument. I don’t know what to do about that at all either. Then, there’s this… uh. Thing happening, in October, and I can’t stop stressing out over it.”
“Wow,” Alicia said, unsure of what else to say. Definitely wasn’t expecting all that.
“But I’m not giving up on the story either,” Tabitha affirmed, straightening up in her seat. “It’s important to me too. I just haven’t been making much real progress.”
“Can I ask you a totally random question?” Alicia asked.
“Of course.” Tabitha smiled.
“Is it true that you got liposuction over the summer?”
“No, it isn’t.” Tabitha chuckled. “Someone must have noticed my weight loss? I was a little over fifty pounds heavier earlier this same year.”
“But you didn’t get lipo?”
“Of course not,” Tabitha answered. “Liposuction isn’t for dramatic weight loss—it’s more of a cosmetic surgery. They usually only remove about four to six pounds at any one time. Adjusting your eating habits is far more effective. As far as I know, there aren’t any surgeons who’ll accept patients for liposuction before they’ve finished puberty anyways, and regardless, I’m sure those procedures wouldn’t be covered under my father’s insurance.”
“Oh,” Alicia blinked. “Really?”
“Really. I changed my diet in a significant way,” Tabitha said. “My summer was… extraordinarily active. I had to change, I really had to. I take it you’ve heard what they used to call me?”
“Yeah, I did hear about that.” Alicia chuckled uneasily. “Girls can be mean, huh?”
“It wasn’t hearing Tubby Tabby that hurt.” Tabitha fidgeted with her tall stack of books, and then leaned forward to rest her chin on it. She didn’t raise her eyes to meet Alicia. “Not that much. I was tubby, they were right about that. That was only the beginning, though. As time went on, someone started calling me… a goblin. More than that, I felt like they—well, a lot of people—actually began treating me like I wasn’t even human anymore.”
“Oh. Oh,” Alicia mouthed. “So, your story you’re writing—”
“Yes.” Tabitha nodded weakly. “Like I said, I’m the goblin.”
That makes things a bit different now, doesn’t it? Alicia thought to herself. At first, it felt a little too far-fetched for this knockout beauty to insist she was the goblin underdog. But, then again, she was holed up here in the library away from everyone else, and her white girl peers did seem to all be pretty rotten.
Laying her sketchpad on the library table, Alicia produced a pencil and drew a hasty rectangle, a little wider at the bottom than the top. The pile of books; she could pencil in the specifics later on. Then, the oval of Tabitha’s face, framed within a quick triangle that loosely represented shoulders slumping on either side.
Maybe Goblina or whatever could be kinda cool.
The drawing took definition inside those basic shapes as Alicia filled everything in with finer detail. Each subtle curl of her hair that fell over her face, the delicate curve of her eyebrow, the way her eyes seemed to tighten at some past memory, that slight, despondent turn that was the profile of her cheek down toward her lip… features scrawled into existence one by one with every steady flourish of Alicia’s pencil.
“Ta-da,” Alicia finally said, spinning her sketchbook around to face Tabitha and sliding it over. “There. I drew your goblin.”
“She’s… beautiful,” Tabitha said, raising her head in surprise and then admiring it with a wistful smile. “It’s so… somber. Almost tragic. I wish I looked like that.”
“You do look like that,” Alicia scoffed, taking her sketchbook back and comparing it to Tabitha again. “If I’m gonna be your concept artist, then you can’t go dissing my artwork.”
8
WHEN WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW WILL HURT HER.
In Tabitha’s first few weeks at school, she’d already begun to question her initial goals.
I knew, in an OBJECTIVE way, that simply being thin and pretty weren’t all it took to make a bunch of friends. But I guess it really is completely different when you’re experiencing it firsthand.
She realized now that in her past life, she’d associated all of her high school problems with her low-self-esteem and poor body image. Subconsciously, some part of her had attributed her past life’s social estrangement and loneliness entirely to her weight and appearance—but several weeks into school, she’d only made one friend this time.
She’d somehow thought she would easily make friends, become more important, somehow; a component of the school’s social paradigm. People would think about her, care about her, worry about her when she wasn’t around. She recognized that it wouldn’t be that straightforward, but the actual brutal truth of just how naive her line of thinking had been was disconcerting.
Even the positive attention was difficult to bear. It wasn’t uncommon to catch a guy guiltily looking away from her breasts, which was an awkward situation she’d failed to mentally prepare herself for. How does anyone prepare for that?
Contrary to her expectations—or lack thereof—when her fat receded over the summer, teenage breasts emerged. This was, in some ways, Tabitha’s first ‘real’ experience as a budding young woman. Her breasts weren’t large—they were rather small B-cups, but because they stood out on her frame in a way she’d never experienced before, it was hard not to be self-conscious about them. She’d expected them to disappear with her weight and be unnoticeable—that was what had happened in her past life. No, they weren’t the dream boobs that could form perfect cleavage like every girl wished for. But Tabitha thought they made pretty good shapes, and found herself a little proud of them.
“Yeah? Well, I heard she sucks a looot of dick,” one of the nearby girls in her Biology class chuckled loud enough—purposely so—for Tabitha to overhear. This group of gossiping teenage girls were all sitting sideways in their seats partway across the classroom, with their backs to her. One of the less bright ones kept sneaking unsubtle peeks over at Tabitha.
“Nuh-uh, no you didn’t,” another freshman girl said—but in a goading tone, rather than a voice suggesting actual disbelief. “Who said that?”
“Fuckin’ everybody I’ve talked to,” the first girl replied. “Hey, you know where she’s from… right?”
Stifling a wry smile, Tabitha ignored them, continuing to halfheartedly fill out her homework in advance.
She knew the loudly gossiping girls were inexpertly baiting her for a reaction, hoping to find a guilty conscience. A series of sexy rumors about her was making another round throughout Springton High, but she couldn’t help but regard them with more amusement than annoyance. From the bits and pieces she’d overheard, they may as well have been primitive precursors to clickbait media of the future: These girls were STUNNED when they heard these seven secrets that TABITHA MOORE doesn’t want you to know!
