++ dream on.

[Tabitha Clarence]

everytime that i look in the mirror

all these lines on my face getting clearer

[/b]
[/center]

It was the second day Tabitha had gone without eating. She felt sick, and, in fact, she’d puked up angry stomach bile too many times to count. If it hadn’t been for that mint she’d stolen from Beating Hearts Lounge on the way out, she was pretty sure she would have passed out. She felt like her stomach was turning in on itself, and it constantly growled at her when she had to walk through the streets and smell the street vendor’s food and yet not be able to afford it. Honestly, things couldn’t keep going on like this––she knew it was unhealthy, and for Christ’s sake, she wanted nothing more to eat. But she couldn’t feed herself and not Cody, and she only had enough money for one of them. Even with all the tips she’d been saving up for the week, she’d only made about fifteen dollars, and with the bus fares and the metro costs and the outrageous city tax, that was just about all it took to be able to get Cody three cans of baby mush. And he was hungry, too. Three cans wasn’t enough to go off for a week, so Tabs had to supplement the rest of Cody’s meals with her regular paycheck, which was a measly eight bucks, roughly, a week. And she only got that on Fridays, if Adrian remembered. Which he didn’t, always. So that left nothing for Tabitha, and even if there was somehow miraculously a little extra, Cody always needed more diapers, and Cody always needed more bibs, or more clothes, or more shoes, or more soap for his baths. Yes, it was almost as if Tabitha’s whole existence hinged off her son’s––well, maybe it wasn’t ‘almost as if.’ It was. She existed for her son. And if she didn’t eat, she didn’t eat. She’d live. As long as she kept hydrated and had at least water or Cody’s apple juice in her stomach, she’d be able to ward off these bouts of nausea. If she could just––be stronger––agh. Tabitha shoved her head back into the toilet and heaved out another round of bile. Her fingers were shaking as she reached back and pushed her hair away from her sweaty neck, and she cringed as she opened her mouth and awaited another heave. This time, though, nothing came out––it was just dry heaves as her stomach attempted to fix the problem that only a small bit of nourishment could fix. Gasping, Tabby sat back on her legs and dropped her clammy forehead into her palm, shivering in her recovery. She couldn’t live like this. She had to eat something. Anything. She was getting to the point where she dreamed about food in her sleep and woke up drooling and nauseated, at four o’clock in the morning, unable to return to sleep. She couldn’t live like this. Tears stung at her eyes and she leaned back on the wall across from the toilet, silently sobbing into her palm, hoping Cody wouldn’t hear her. He hated it when his mommy cried. He didn’t deserve a mommy who cried all the time––he deserved a mommy that was happy and strong. She owed it to Cody; she owed him that much.

Yes, she had to be stronger for her son. Tabitha sighed, wiped her eyes, and stood up, regarding her pale, drawn reflection in the mirror with a disappointed grimace. Her eyeliner was smeared and her eyes were red and she just looked disgusting. It was moments like these when she wondered how anyone could want to pay her to strut around naked on a stage. It’s not like she had much to flaunt, anyway. Her breasts had gotten larger as a result of the pregnancy, but her cup size was only steadily decreasing now that she didn’t eat as often. Her hair was starting to fall out. Her nails were cracking and her legs were weak. She looked breakable––so frail that if you so much as touched her, she would crumple to the floor in a pile of cracked bones. A steady trickle of snot was winding down her lip, and as it tickled her, Tabitha’s reflexes kicked in and she wiped it off with her sleeve. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue flannel button down that she stole from a clothesline in Harlem, and she felt guilty every time she wore it, but it wasn’t like she had a choice. It was unbuttoned to reveal a tight black tank top, back from her high school days and much too tight now. Her jeans were the ones she wore everyday. Her dark blue skinny jeans with ripped knees and frayed bottoms. Her shoes were still too tight, and her feet were blistered because she wasn’t wearing socks. In sum, Tabitha Clarence was a mess. She had five bucks shoved in her pocket and a couple of safety pennies, for tax, but beyond that, nothing. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and flushed the toilet. She had to get something to eat. Things couldn’t go on like this. Tabs walked out of the bathroom and offered a pained smile to her son, who was looking questioningly up at her with those bright blue eyes of his. “Hey, kid,” she said to him, patting his head and kneeling down to his level. “We need to get to the store, okay? Mommy’s a little bit hungry.” Cody smiled and nodded, muttering incoherently in his unsophisticated baby-speak. He was only two, and sometimes he could say intelligible things, but most of the time it was slurred rambling. He reached out his arms to Tabitha, and she scooped him up, holding him close to her chest as he wrapped his pudgy child’s fingers around her neck. With her free hand, she grabbed the keys to her tiny apartment and left, locking it behind her and walking down the hallway with a pale determination on her faded features. She walked to the metro, and there went two dollars of her five. She left the metro, walked to the grocery store, got a cart and put Cody in the seat up top. She felt rather faint and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep up being around food and not eating it. Her stomach roared and she pushed the cart faster, hoping to find the cheaper section of the store, if there was one. She was in a nicer grocery store, unfortunately. It was the only one with which she was familiar because it was the only one that carried the brand of baby mush that Cody liked. Plus, it was closest, only being right outside of Astoria.

With shaking fingers, Tabitha pulled out the money from her pocket––one, two, three, and eleven cents. Three dollars and eleven cents. That was all she had to her name. Staving off her disappointment, Tabs stopped the cart and began to look around the aisle in which she found herself. The bread and cereal aisle. Okay, there had to be something here that three dollars and eleven cents could buy. Poptarts! Those were cheap enough, and she liked them, and they’d last her long enough. She left Cody in the top of the cart and then walked to the other end of the aisle, where she presumed the Poptarts would––oh. The smallest box of them was $3.99. Damn it. Okay, well, what about a box of cereal? She didn’t have much milk left, but she could eat it dry. She looked around, saw a box of Cheerios. $4.95. Trix, $4.50. Shit. She couldn’t afford any of this, not even a box of cereal. Tabby’s hopes started to sink and she felt the pit of her stomach go cold. She was so hungry, but she had nothing. This wasn’t good. She returned defeatedly to her cart and her son and sighed, shuffling on to the next aisle in the hopes of finding something there. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. She’d rounded too fast around the corner, had come around too quick, and hit a guy looking at pasta square in the side. “Oh, gosh, I’m so––” but then she had looked up, had seen his face. It was a face she knew all to well. Or, had known, anyway. It was the face of a boy well cared for, of a man well sought after. He was tall, so very tall. He’d dwarfed her even in high school, where she was of a fairly average height. He was tanned and his hair was just as sandy, dark blonde as Tabitha had remembered. She loved his hair. She loved it even now, just as she loved him, even now. She looked up at him with her watery, grey eyes, feeling suddenly humiliated that she was so pale and so thin and so.... poor-looking, with him looking so good. So wealthy. So happy. She wondered how he could possibly be so happy when she wasn’t. She wondered what he was doing here. Thousands of memories welled up and threatened to spill over, but Tabitha bit her lip and remained vigilantly silent. Remember, she reminded herself, you’re angry at him, because he left you. He left you. No, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of tears. She wouldn’t give him any satisfaction anymore, because she owed him nothing. Nothing. She wished Cody wasn’t here. She wrapped her arm around him protectively and called out, incredulously, “Alan?”

[/color][/blockquote]

TAGG

• • Alan. [/b][/center][/size]

[Alan Briggs]

I'm not saying it's your fault

although you could have done more

He looked like a fool. No, honestly. Looking at his reflection in the rearview mirror, his brows scrunched up in frustration. He felt like he could literally growl at his reflection, and it still wasn’t going to be enough to express how violated he felt. His hair was fine the way it was. Why had she felt the need to mess with it? Alan looked like a damn fool and there was nothing he could do about it. Why? Because, see, there wasn’t anything that could be done about it. He’d gone out of the house looking like he currently did—slightly worse, mind you, but he’d managed to make it suck a little bit less by continuously running his fingers through his hair—and he was going to look like this until he died, probably. Seriously, the stuff that his cousin had out in his hair was enough to cement right into place. Not even a shower was going to cure him from this ailment, damn it. Even with him, restlessly running his fingers through his hair from time to time, it wasn’t enough to just get rid of the ridiculous Mohawk his cousin though he would look ‘cute’ in. Why was he doing this again? Oh, right. He was supposed to be in school—and he wasn’t, and he went by his life pretending he did by disappearing on the adequate schedule to do whatever, and then re-appearing at home, only to disappear later to do ‘homework’. Alan snorted. Yeah, that was utter bullshit if he’d ever heard one. Lately, most of that time had been spent with Agatha, doing absolutely nothing until he absolutely had to move, or she annoyed him enough to go out. It was the life, as far as Alan was concerned, and while he should be worrying about how his years of grace were going to be over soon, considering he was supposed to be graduating in a couple of semesters, he couldn’t be bothered by it. Life was too good to think about anything else. He’d been unbelievably lucky for the past semesters. Someone out there had to love him, because ever since he’d dropped out of school, not once had his parents suspected he wasn’t attending still. No calls, no suspicious lack of mail—nothing. It was as if they’d forgotten altogether that their son was supposed to be majoring in political sciences, and that grades should happen once upon a time. Nope, nothing of the sort. Alan sometimes felt bad—not because of the lie, but because people like him were the ones who stole all the luck to the ones who needed it the most. Here he was, a 21-year-old born in Connecticut, leaving the life in New York, with his beloved parents—well, mother. But honestly? They were better off without his dad. It was as if he’d never existed. Except for the monthly check and the time-to-time calls…but other than that, they were free of him.

Ah, yes, it was a total difference than the life he’d been living back in that little town. Alan remembered how he’d felt when he’d first arrived to this huge city. His eyes had probably been wide, and he’d tried to play it off as cool, even if he was scared. He laughed. The memories seemed so distant now. He had been scared. Anxious, doubtful…all the things a teenager shouldn’t be but always was, anyway. He was on a strange city, and he was gonna have to start right back from the bottom, and then all that he’d left behind…he grimaced as he pulled into the parking lot of the market and slipped out of his car. No, he wasn’t going to think about that. That was in the past, and this was the present, and it was all that mattered. What was in the past—it was just that: the past, and there was nothing he could do to change it. Hell, he didn’t want to change it. It was what had shaped him. Yeah, he had it all, and Alan planned on having even more when he figured out what he wanted out of life. Political sciences had not been at all what he’d been expecting, and truth be told, he’d just gotten in them to shut his father up. Alvin Briggs, major extraordinaire. Hah. His golden days were in the past now, and they both knew it. Except that Alvin was looking to find in Alan his replacement—a puppet in which he’d be able to live vicariously through. What Alvin didn’t know, was that as soon as he’d sent his son away in what he thought was his smartest maneuver, he’d let go of any kind of claim he had on him. Oh, sure, the monthly checks were freaking awesome, and while without them they’d be tighter than what they were used to—and they’d probably only be able to afford half of the things they currently did (or less)—if it meant getting rid of him, Alan was sometimes all for it. Other times, eh, not so much. And so, activating his mini cooper’s alarm over his shoulder, he breezed into the place, rolling his sleeves to his elbow and sliding his sunglasses off, pocketing them on his shirt. He was on an errand, and as foolish as he knew he looked, he better hurry. Agatha was not a nice sight when angry. Wincing as he remembered it, he unconsciously tugged on his hair, trying to pass it off as a simple scratch as he went by an elderly couple, smiling sheepishly. He couldn’t get any more ostentatious than this. Instead of looking from a native of a small town in Connecticut, he looked like a born and bred New Yorker, with a ‘look at me’ sign taped to his forehead.

Yeah, he was gonna kill Agatha. Taking a deep breath, he opened a box of Nerds and started snacking on them. He knew he wasn’t supposed to consume anything before he paid for it, but Alan always did pay for it. He never forgot to do it. Besides, he was hungry, and he needed something to open up his appetite better. Quickly, he took a turn into the pasta aisle and started scanning for the brand she loved best. Something about its ingredients being yadda yadda, yadda yadda. Or something along those lines. Thig was that she needed pasta, ‘cause they were making lasagna. Or more like she was making lasagna with her Nona, and he was just gonna loaf around in their living room. Those two woman surely knew how to cook, and Alan planned to enjoy their talents fully. Crap, okay, he couldn’t find the brand of pasta Agatha wanted. Fabulous. Now he’d have to call her, and endure her ranting about how it was probably there, he just couldn’t see it thanks to his stupid, preppy eyes. Or something along those lines. She loved to rub it in, how much of a town boy he was—loaded and such a daddy’s boy. Rolling his eyes, he pulled out his iPhone and scrolled through his contacts. He’d be dead before he set her on speed dial. Although, with the amount of calls he was placing to her mobile lately, he might as well do it. At least he was calling her. Alan snickered. She hated talking on the phone. Aha, payback, bitch. “Agatha, baby, I’m sorry love, but the pasta you wanted isn’t currently available,” he said in the sweetest tone he could muster when she took eons to pick up. She’d probably been considering not answering at all, that betch. “Would you like me to try a different supermarket? I know how delicate your stomach is, baby,” he cooed in a lovesick voice. Ah, he was having too much fun with this. Laughing at the mild words Agatha threw his way (see, that was the pros of having a cousin who refused to cuss), he scanned the aisle for the alternatives that she was barking off at the other end of the line. “Whoa, slow down baby girl,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t see any of those either. Well, you better start believing it, sweetie pie,” he said with a roll of his eyes as he scratched the back of his right ear. “What? I may be a little slow on the uptake, love of my life, but I do know how to read,” he said with a snort as he reached up to the top of shelf and pulled a familiar-looking package. Aha! Bingo. “Never mind, baby cakes, found it,” he said easily, ignoring her random words as he hung up.

Grabbing a couple more packages, he was whistling happily as he thought about the lasagna he was later gonna consume, when a loud ‘OOF!’ escaped him. “Godda—” he started cursing, the swear words leaving his mouth almost automatically, but he managed to control himself when he registered it was a woman who’d slammed into him. A very blind woman, but a woman nonetheless, which meant he had to keep his swearing lines in check. The small-town upbringing in him, you see. He’d dropped the packages of pasta upon the impact, Alan was still bent over, hugging his side in pain. Okay, that woman had not been respecting the shopping cart speed limits. Seriously. Cursing a thousand times inside his head, Alan regulated his breathing and tried standing up. Okay, not so bad. Still a bit short of breath, but he’d live. An ugly bruise would act as a souvenir for a couple of days, but he’d definitely suffered worse while playing basketball. “It’s okay,” he grunted, even if she hadn’t really finished the apology. Alan had yet to open his eyes, once he did, however, he wished he hadn’t. At all. Any type of color drained from his face, and his fingers turned ice cold. Okay, if this was some kind of joke, it really sucked. Or maybe he was just seeing too much into things. Here in NYC there were a lot of redheads. Too many, in fact. Why would one of them turn out to be Tabitha? Besides, this one had a kid, so there was no way it was her. He’d almost believed it too, until he heard her voice again—saying his name. Oh God. Alan closed his eyes, letting her voice; his name, wash over him and transporting him back, in the blink of an eye, to those golden days where laughter had been the only medicine he’d needed. When the smell of her hair, her skin had been enough to get him through a hard day. He could see her face, clear as day, seared behind his eyelids, with the sun hitting the crown of her head, making her red hair explode in flames—beautiful, beautiful flames. “Tabitha,” he exhaled softly, his lips whispering the word almost reverently. He hadn’t allowed himself to even think such a word for a such long period of time, that he exhaled it with relief, ache, desire…so, so many things. If Alan concentrated hard enough, he could swear that her name tasted just like she had on that spring so many years ago. It really couldn’t be, could it? What was he supposed to do now? The desire to bolt was fueling through his veins, but he’d already done that once, hadn’t he? It was bound to be old by now. So, he opened his eyes, straightened, and decided to suck it up for once. Clearing his throat, he raised his gaze and dared to meet it with hers. Gulp. Yeah, he needed to swallow again. And again. There wasn’t enough saliva in his mouth to get rid of the sandy feeling at the back of his throat. It was Tabitha. As if he’d had any doubt after his name had been called. With her red hair, her porcelain skin and her gorgeous, wonderful eyes. Clearing his throat yet again, he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Trying to find anything to say—just to stop the impending silence that was lingering above them like a dark rain cloud.

“H-hey,” he said in cheer fake, his voice wavering as he dared to look at her again. Oh God, this really was happening. Swallowing again, he bent to pick up the pasta packages he’d let fall to the floor upon the impact. Anything to distract him from this nervousness, the anxiety. He noticed his fingers were shaking, and he tried to control himself. It was getting out of hand already, and it hadn’t even started. Standing back up, he smiled half-heartedly and ran a hand through his hair, wincing as he was reminded again of just how he looked. Fabulous. He was going to see his only real ex-girlfriend while looking like a moron. Just fabulous. He had to calm down. Why was he so shaken up? She’d lied to him, they had broken up, and they had both moved on. It was more than obvious. She had a kid now, didn’t she? Hah. Figures. Frowning as he looked away, he shuffled his feet nervously again. Okay, so maybe this situation had hypothetically happened inside his head hundreds of times, but no matter how many times he had ‘hypothetically’ scripted what he would say to her exactly whenever he saw her again, he was drawing blanks. Hypothetical situations were bullshit; because as soon as reality stepped in, it was worth squat. He couldn’t look at her, he simply couldn’t. If he did, he’d probably notice her wonderful her eyes looked, or how soft her lips were, or how…how…how she had a kid wrapped around her. Swallowing painfully this time around, he scratched the back of his neck, while the other hand worked to bring some more Nerds to his mouth. Chewing thoughtfully, just as he was about to speak again, his mobile started to ring with Agatha’s voice squawking through the speaker: “Alaaaaaaaaaaaan, baaaaaabyy, it’s meee, pick uuuup.” She’d thought it funny while recording it and setting it as his ringtone for her. Now, he simply wanted the earth to swallow him whole. Why had he allowed for her to do such a stupid, childish thing? Coughing, he sent her to voicemail, setting his mobile to vibrate. Anything to make things less awkward. What now? “H-how are you?” he asked lamely. Hey, what was he supposed to say anyway? Hey, what’s up filthy little liar, how you doin’? Right. Like that would go well.