So Fake It's Good

There were many worse family's in the world to be born in to. I could have been true trailer trash , suckled on Valium in a plastic lawn chair crib, or born in a dumpster swaddled in old burger wrappers, or in a jail cell to a 14 year old junkie mother, or brought up in a orphanage and have no mother at all. But instead, my mother was a soppy romance novelist a few years past her prime, and I'd been born in Paradise trailer Park, with it's flock of plastic lawn flamingos and dry dirt that grew only scrub grass and metal trailers.

These are the things that begged to be pondered on the last day of school, as I leaned over a sink in the school bathroom, picking an eyelash out of my eyeliner. I was waiting for the whitewater tide of stupid to clear out before I left. Through the thin walls I could hear their whoops and hollers echoing inside the banks of lockers and coming out mangled like growls.

To pass the time, I read some of the graffiti on the bathroom mirror while I dug around the melting black goop rimming my eyes.

Georgia is fat

Pegg <3 Jason <---- boyfriend stealing skank

I sighed. No math was necessary to figure out that a large percent of the school's misfits came from the trailer park. Like often breeds like, and it stood to reason that society's misfits would end up with misfit children. That was Paradise really, people trying to work through their problems with an audience of judgmental neighbors. Like high school again when you just didn't get enough of it the first time.

But, luckily for me, my days of high school were numbered, and so hopefully were my days stuck in Paradise. This was my second to last, last day of school, and hopefully I'd leave next year with a one finger salute and never look back. Paradise would have to find itself another moody bathroom philosopher.

Finnaly, I pulled the eyelash out and blinked like mad while tears flooded my face. They were out of practice; I didn't cry a lot. I looked at the little black lash caught in a teardrop on my finger nail.

"Lose an eyelash, make a wish", I thought, though I didn't know if it counted when you had clawed it out of your eyeball first. Outside the bathroom, it was silent , so I started walking home while I pondered what to wish for. The rows of identical lockers grinned emptily at me as I strolled along the hallways.

"Well, I wouldn't wish for fame, " I said, talking to no one in particular. Outside the student parking lot was deserted and the seagull flock of Styrofoam cups rustled their feathers in the wind. " And not for money or looks either. Too temporary. "

The air was pleasant, hot, but not abrasively so. While I walked, I scuffed my boots against the ground and made the buckles on my backpack jingle. I was in an indulgent mood, with the coming months of summer long and stretched out like a cat ahead of me, and I was in the mind to ponder things I wouldn't normally have given much time to. I thought about the wish question with unusual seriousness, but I couldn't quite come up with a good answer.

Later that night , I would probably go to Trina’s, and sit off to the side while the other girls spilled their dramas and traumas, and the rattling old fan blew cat hair around the room. Then mom would get back from work, and we'd eat dinner in the dusky evening kitchen because it was too hot to turn any lights on.

Soon the Paradise's gaudy road sign came in to view, with the plastic "e" hanging off sideways and a garden of cigarette butts growing up around the post. The sun was still high and I knew that the heat would continue to boil well into the late evening. I still couldn't decide on a wish, but I felt no urgency to do so.

Right now I had nothing but time, stretching on and on, all the way  to the hot orangey sun glowing like a neon bar sign over Paradise.