Tracy

She had dreams, you know. Like, big ones. Ponies for her tenth birthday, a car for her sixteenth, and a prince with an accent eventually. it is too bad things ended up the way they did.
He had dreams too. Crazy ones. He was ganna run away at ten, be an actor at sixteen, and clean up and settle down as a prince one day. Same goes for him; it really is too bad.
She works at a fast food joint now. Her long cedar brown hair can be seen only as far down as seven weeks without a root touch up on the trashy blonde allows. Her hair is thinning, like it shouldn't be at twenty-nine, and those drugs she cant afford, they are keeping her teeth pretty fragile too. She wanted a convertible, and she gets to drive the '96 mercury three days a week now to her part-time, minimum wage job. If she's lucky, and feeling wealthy, she can sneak in a stop at her dealers where she's reverted to paying for her addiction with flesh and favors.
He isn't any better. He works at a gas station, four days a week. They make him park that mercury in the back. His freckles look like a disease, his blue eyes are empty and blood shot. We all used to be into his smile, but it's better if he keeps his mouth shut these days. He smells like they shut his water off (cause they did) and like he boozes it up in the back room, (Cause he does). He'll get fired eventually, by a nineteen year old manager or something, and the girls paying for gas at the counter when he walks out with that nasty polo slung over his scrawny shoulders, they'll giggle.
And when he gets home, the neighbors will suspect he's hitting her. They won't call anyone or anything though, it isn't there place and it would put them out even further then listening to it would. Sometimes we think the sadist in 'em likes it anyways, they feel like she deserves it or something; maybe she does. last week someone said not to worry about her crying and what not, cause it wasn't like we'd notice if he knocked out another tooth. Then one of 'em will drive away in that car and the other will just sit outside and chain smoke. We wonder if they go back inside at all, cause they are there when we get kissed goodnight and there when we drive by in our 4X4s on the way to church. We judge 'em in our hearts, with the gospel on our lips.
We were watchin' her out there on the porch this monin, and something different happened though. Mom turned her head, smiled, and told us - "I think her name is Tracy, or maybe Terry, but i think it's Tracy."

Tracy huh? We'd always just called her Trash.