DISCLAIMER: I own nothing Degrassi-esque. I don't own any of the characters, except for Courtney, Tiffany, Daniel, Frankie and Adam.

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Chapter Three: Trailer Park Royalty

January 2001 – Later That Night

Alex: 12

Jay: 13

The euphoria of kissing Jay was so much greater than Alex had ever though possible. As she crept through the kitchen toward the lounge, Alex stubbed her toe on the end table. She cursed out loud, then remembered her mom was just behind her at the table. She could barely see, but the artificial orange light from outside that filtered through the window gave enough luminance to see her mom wasn't disturbed. Hell, she was barely conscious.

Alex wondered to herself if Nathaniel was home. She wouldn't risk sneaking over to his bedroom to check though. Her next thought was whether she should wake her mom up, and chance having her keep her up all night with her drunken ramblings. As she approached her cautiously, she saw the bottle of Vodka was empty, half of it splashed all over the table top. It probably wasn't the first bottle, Alex thought to herself. She looked under the table, and saw two more large bottles of Vodka and eight empty cans of lager. Alex had heard of the phrase "I could drink you under the table", but this was just going too far.

She uneasily moved a lock of her mom's dirty blonde hair. Her eyes were tightly glued shut. "Mom?" Alex uttered, her tiny voice filling the small space like water from a burst pipe. She waited for what seemed like hours for a response, but to no avail. She tried again, her voice a little louder this time. "Mom!"

Emily lifted her head off the wooden surface for mere fractions of a millisecond, and grunted incoherently, but nothing more came of it. She plopped her head back down on the table and was off again. Alex had hit a dead end. There was nothing more she could do to help her mom, if she wouldn't help herself.

Lying in bed that night, Alex couldn't sleep. Nathaniel came in at 2.30am. He didn't disturb her per sé, but she could hear him muttering to himself as he padded around the rooms of the trailer, belching loudly, arguing with himself about things quite alien to Alex.

She spun around onto her belly and pulled herself up using the bed headboard. She craned her neck right out of the window, leaning so far out she almost toppled out. She could just see Jay's place. The lights were on outside and Karen was sat having a smoke, talking to someone.

The speech was inaudible, and Alex couldn't see who she was talking to, she could just see her lips moving. Occasionally, she throw her head back and laugh. Only rarely though.

She seemed painfully unhappy. Alex knew Jay's dad was in prison, and he would never be able to hurt her, or Jay ever again, but Alex felt that wasn't where the story ended. There was more to Hogart family life than met the eye. And she was about to find out.

April 2001

Alex: 12

Jay: 14

Fast forward three months. Things were moving faster than a jet plane. For Jay. It had been a while since the kiss, and nothing more had come of it. Jay had recently celebrated his fourteenth birthday. Up until now, Alex had never noticed just how much more grown he was than her. Things had changed. Instead of hanging around just together, like they had done, they now hung around with Jay's friends from school. There were about six of them in total, four guys and two girls. The girls were OK, but Alex couldn't find the words to speak to the guys.

They all smoked. Even the girls. They all spend the evenings together at the ravine.

It wasn't their own special place anymore. Everyone knew about it, and soon everyone was coming here to hang out. They'd deserted the multiplex theater parking lot – much to the management's relief – and now they all came here; smoking weed, drinking, making out everywhere for the whole world to see.

Jay's new friends were all jerks. Loud, crude, thoughtless. The first time Jay had bought Alex along with him, they'd all made jokes to him about her. And what was worse, Jay didn't defend her or try to stop them in anyway. He even laughed at some of their comments.

Alex went home and cried that night. After the humiliating experience at the ravine that time, she decided she needed a major image overhaul if she was gonna make it in the cut-throat world of high school.

With the balmy, warmer conditions of Canadian springtime, Alex started her transformation by donning a white wife-beater and jeans. She wore large hoop earrings that Jay stole from the local drugstore for her. She had nothing to fill her bra, but she wore one anyway. From some trashy teen soap on cable, Alex had learned that she could stuff her bra with toilet paper to make it appear she had boobs. So she did.

Tiffany and Courtney were the two girls that hung around with Jay's clan. Upon hearing their names for the first time, Alex immediately assumed they'd be Queen Bee, Mean Girl teenyboppers. Courtney was. Alex was unsure as to why she hung around with trailer trash like Jay and co. They were Trailer Park Royalty. That insult was thrown around all too frequently by the rich kids. They didn't see anything wrong with it, like it was meant as some kinda sick compliment or something. But at least they were royalty somewhere, not dumb ass wannabes like them.

Tiffany spoke to Alex whenever she was around, which was a start. She seemed like a pretty down to earth girl, but she was so much older than Alex it was like being minded by her older sister.

Jay was different around the girls. Flirty, charming, funny. The fact that he was almost two and a half years older than Alex stuck out like a sore thumb.

The guys: Adam, Daniel, Frankie and Sean, were all big testosterone-y, macho guys. Alex didn't know them, even through school, except for one. Sean Cameron. He was in grade eight, in the middle, older than Alex but younger than Jay.

None of the guys spoke to her. So she had to rely on Tiffany for company, cos once Jay got around the honeys he was well and truly gone.

They were all gathered around the ravine. Courtney and Tiffany sat cross-legged on top of the picnic bench, Jay stood, along with two of the guys, and the other two sat on the bench facing outward. "Yo, hog!" Daniel exclaimed loudly, breaking the silence of the evening. "Quit keepin' that all to yourself!" He swung his arm out and yanked the joint from between Frankie's fingers.

Alex knew what they were doing, and until now she'd allowed herself to remain sheltered and oblivious, but now she was nervous. She wanted it to go back to being just her and Jay. The ravine was their place. They'd grown up together there, spent hundreds of hours hanging out. Now here they were, smoking weed and drinking.

"I shouldn't be doing this." Alex thought to herself. "This is just what my mom and dad were like. Just what Nathaniel and my mom are like. I shouldn't be here."

Alex tried to pluck up the courage to speak to Jay. "Jay?" She spoke, but no sound came out. Her voice was trapped somewhere between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

She looked up at him and he was looking directly at Tiffany. He had a goofy smile on his face and a beer can glued firmly in his left hand. He dragged ferociously on a cigarette. The smoke billowed around in every direction. Alex tugged at his obscenely baggy hockey jersey, unable to find words to verbalize her request to leave. Jay's head lowered briefly and his blue eyes momentarily flashed her way, but as soon as they'd met they darted away again to re-gain the attention of Tiffany. Alex tried again, but Jay just side stepped and batted her hand away discretely.

Alex felt a lump forming in her throat and she couldn't control her bottom lip from quivering.

She turned and stomped out of the ravine, feeling her cheeks getting deeper and deeper crimson. She'd just made a complete ass of herself. Because she couldn't have Jay to herself. She'd learned throughout the twelve "hell on earth" years of her life that she should never expect anything. Nothing was as it seemed. She should never assume that someone is going to be there for her, cos nine times out of ten, they just ain't.

"Woah! What happened to the short ass?" Courtney's shrill, dumb, screechy voice rattled around in Alex's eardrum for a good five minutes after she escaped the ravine.

"Why are you such a dork?" She screamed to herself. She punched the wall angrily and her hand went straight through the flimsy fascia of one of her neighbors trailers.

She cursed herself and screwed up her face upon realizing the pain.

Would she ever figure out how to be a normal human being? One thing was for sure though. She needed to move on from Jason Hogart. Tiffany and Courtney was right. She was way too young.

There's Chapter 3. Kinda a build up to the action packed next chapter, which is coming soon.

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