Chapter Text
Barbie enjoys being at home.
Sure, the home she shares with Gloria, Sasha, and Sasha’s dad in the real world isn’t as glamorous as her dreamhouse, but she thinks she likes it more. It feels so much more lived in without the always perfectly clean rooms or the perfect food. She likes it there. It has a certain scent that just screams comfort.
This particular day, she’s enjoying being at home by laying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. She enjoys this. She enjoys thinking against a blank ceiling. The house phone rings from the kitchen, and rushes up to answer it.
“Hi, it’s Barbie!”
“Barbie! Good, you answered. Listen, we need a favor.” Gloria’s muffled voice comes through the phone, breathless. Barbie hums, urging her to continue. “Sasha got in trouble at school, something about a fight, they weren’t super clear. They need an adult there to talk to. Neither me or her dad can get out of work. Do you think you can go talk to the principal?”
And, woah. It’s been a while since she was a doll, and she’s learned mostly how to be human, but she’s never had, like, an adult meeting before. She thinks, and then exhales. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
Her anxiety is clear apparently, based on how Gloria softens. “Barbie, you don’t have to. I can tell them that no one’s free to make it and we have to meet on a different day.”
Barbie shakes her head, and then remembers Gloria can’t see her. “No, it’s fine. I can do this.”
“Great, you got this!”
Barbie can hear the bright smile on the other side of the phone. It makes her smile. “I got this.”
“Love you. See you later, you and Sasha can let me know how it goes.”
“Love you too.” She says. It doesn’t feel as weird when she says it to Gloria as it did with Ken. “We’ll make sure to.”
Gloria hangs up, and Barbie is met with the reality of what she agreed to.
Wonderful.
She makes it to the school roughly 10 minutes later and walks up to the front desk. “Hello.” The lady there says, not looking away from her computer screen. “Who are you here for?”
Barbie takes a breath. “Here to talk to the principal about Sasha.”
The lady looks away from her computer, eyes Barbie, and then turns back to her computer. “Go ahead.”
Barbie nods and walks down the hall. There’s a slightly open door, and Sasha’s sitting in a seat across from the principal, an empty seat next to her. The principal is a middle-aged man with black hair that has streaks of gray throughout. She knocks before she opens it all the way. Sasha looks up at the sound of knocking from where she was chipping off her black nail polish – that Barbie had applied during a “girl’s night”, of course – and her eyes widen a little. Barbie smiles slightly and sits down next to her.
Hello there, Ms – um, who are you?” He says, cutting himself off.
“Barbie Handler. I’m on the emergency contact sheet.” She says, as she had been practicing the whole way there. The principal looks down at Sasha’s documentation, reading it off, then looks back up.
“Well, Ms. Handler, I’m sure you’re aware of why you’re here today.” He says, eyeing Sasha. Sasha eyes him back, and Barbie really doesn’t miss being on her bad side. “Would you like me to explain the situation, Sasha?”
Sasha just leans further into her chair, into more of a manspread than a straight sit-up. She crosses her arms over her chest. “I would rather you let me go back to class, or go home. But neither of those things are gonna happen.”
The principal squints, glaring. “Ms. Handler, Sasha has been involved in a fight. The boy went home with a bloody nose and a black eye.” He says, looking towards Barbie. “Here at Davy Crockett, we have a zero tolerance bullying policy. So, I sense you can see why this is an issue.”
And, well, she doesn’t, so far. She thinks if Sasha has a good enough reason, they should tolerate it, just this once. She says as much. Just, not like that, obviously.
“What did the kid do?” She asks. Sasha grins into her hand, and the principal looks directly at her.
“Does it matter?” He asks, “She gave him a bloody nose and a black eye. His parents were discussing if he had to go to urgent care or not. Nothing he could say or do requires that reaction.”
Barbie shrugs. “I can think of a few things.”
“Oh, please. Enlighten me, Ms. Handler.”
“If he touched her first, if he said something bad enough to her, if he started attacking someone else, if he had something bad enough about someone else,” She lists off. “Should I continue?”
The principal exhales through his nose. “I don’t understand how you can tolerate this behavior, Ms. Handler, truly. There’s nothing that can make us tolerate this.”
She turns to Sasha. “Sasha,” she asks. Sasha turns to look at her. “What did he do?”
And, suddenly, Sasha looks weird. Embarrassed, almost, which is weird. She’s never embarrassed, or nervous. She’s always proud of fighting for what she believes in. The principal looks at her like he doesn’t know, either. She looks down and begins to pick at her nail polish again.
“I’ll just take the suspension.” She murmurs.
“I tried to get her to tell me, already.” The principal says. “She usually will, but she refuses to say it this time. I usually agree with her, too, and just let her off with a detention. But she won’t.”
Sasha looks up at him. “I said I’ll take the suspension.” She snaps. He types something on his computer, and a document begins to print. “A letter, saying you have 3 days of out-of-school suspension. I expect better from you, Sasha.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t.” She retorts, grabbing the letter and throwing her backpack over her shoulder and storming out. Barbie stands.
“Nice to meet you.” She says to the principal, even if it wasn’t, and follows Sasha out. She’s standing by the front desk, waiting for Barbie. Barbie signs her out and they go outside the school. On their walk home, Sasha is quiet.
“What happened?” Barbie finally asks a minute or two later, because she has to know. She told Gloria she’d have a report, and if Sasha won’t tell her, she won’t tell her and her mom. Sasha looks at Barbie for a minute, and she has to look up a little. Barbie is shot by the reminder of how young Sasha is. Sasha looks back down.
“Does it matter? Zero tolerance means zero tolerance.” She says, anger seeping into her tone. “Not like they’d punish the other kid.”
“Why wouldn’t they punish the other kid? If he did something wrong, they’d have to punish him.” Barbie questions. She has answers to most of her dumb questions she’d ask in the beginning, but some things in this world she doesn’t think are dumb questions but dumb answers.
Sasha laughs a little, looking back at Barbie. “Think of it like this. You know how when Ken was here and learned how men were, he got all testosterone-filled and started running wild with power?” Barbie nods, and Sasha continues. “That’s basically what all boys my age are like. Stupid and saying stuff they don’t know about.”
Barbie thinks about the day she had where all the Kens were like that, and it must be terrible to live like that. “Oh.” She says, and Sasha nods.
“Yeah, it sucks. I’m the only one smart enough to argue against them, but they get all butthurt. It’s annoying.” Sasha vents, looking at the ground and kicking a pebble. Barbie listens intently.
“So what’d he say?” She says, and Sasha locks her gaze to the ground. Her converse, adorned with little scribbles, kick against the pebble as they reach the spot in which it landed before.
“It’s not like we can change anything now.” She says, and holds up the letter. “I’m already suspended.”
Barbie hums. “True, but we can make sure you don’t get in as much trouble with your mom.”
Sasha thinks about this for a moment. Barbie watches her stare at the ground as the gears turn in her head. Until, finally-
“Ok. I’ll tell you.”
Barbie nods. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Sasha’s hands begin to shake. She shoves them in the pockets of her black ripped jeans. “I, um, I’ve never said this stuff, like, out loud before. So,” She begins, trembling in her voice, like she’s either gonna cry or scream.
“This kid, he’s always kind of made fun of me. I didn’t go against him like I did the others, ‘cause I was scared of him. And it’s embarrassing, because he’s so scrawny, but he knew stuff that the rest of them didn’t. He would,” She hesitates, kicking her pebble into the road. “Um, he would call me names. Things he knew were true.”
And, clearly, she was uncomfortable saying these names, so Barbie didn’t press to know them. She just hummed to let her know she’s listening, and she can continue.
“He would call me a dyke.” She whispers the last word, and Barbie knows what it means. She’s heard it already, because it’s inevitable. “And- and a fag. And stuff along those lines.”
Sasha takes her hand out of her pocket and clumsily wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “Sorry.” She says.
Barbie knows Sasha hates being touched, but she looks so small. She has an oversized t-shirt over an oversized sweater, and the outfit is practically drowning her. She looks like a kid who tried on her dad’s clothes, and Barbie gets struck with the reminder that she is a kid all over again. She is a kid who's wearing her dad clothes. She hovers her arm over Sasha's shoulder, just slightly. Sasha looks at her hesitantly, and then nods. Barbie places her arm on her shoulder and Sasha looks back down. She leans into Barbie's side a little, just enough for comfort but not enough to take her off balance.
“How long has it been happening?” Barbie asks, running her hand up and down her upper arm.
“Like, 2 years now. We were friends in, like, 6th grade, and I told him that I liked girls. Then he got all weird around me, and he stopped hanging out with me. When we came back from summer for 7th grade, he was telling people I was gay. Most people didn’t even know my name, just that I was a dyke . That’s why I was so- standoff-ish, last year. I would’ve rather had people know me as intimidating rather than gay.” She admits, and she talks quietly. Not a whisper, but quieter than she normally talks.
“So what did it this time?” Barbie asks, and she feels bad for prying, but she also wants to know what happened. Sasha sighs.
“He started talking about you. And Mom. Calling you guys the same things he called me. It made me realize how bad the things he says are, and I guess I just snapped.” She murmurs, like she’s ashamed to admit that she cares about her Mom and Barbie.
Barbie can see their house down the road, and she tries not to think too hard about how good Sasha is, and how much she cares. She tries not to think about how much she sees Sasha as a child. As her child. She wants to tell her she’s proud of her, but she thinks the other thought lingering in the back of her mind will make Sasha feel better.
“Did you punch him?”
Sasha laughs, bringing a hand up to her mouth as she smiles. “No, worse.” She says when she removes her hand, a smile still plastered across her face. “I slammed his head against a lunch table.”
Barbie swats lightly at Sasha’s upper arm, where her hand was gliding across. It was clear she wasn’t mad though, a grin seeping into her features, showing how proud she actually is. “Sasha!”
Sasha laughs. “What? You can’t be rude when you’re standing on a lunch table, or someone will come bash her head against it. That’s like, lunchroom rules or something, I think.”
Barbie laughs as they make their way up the driveway. “Are you gonna explain that to your mom?”
Sasha thinks about it as Barbie lets go of her to unlock the door. “No. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”
Barbie smiles, opening the door for her. “Right.” Sasha smiles back and walks in, dropping her bag on a nearby chair and putting the letter on a kitchen counter. Barbie sits down on the couch, putting on a random reality show. Sasha joins her a few minutes later, sitting next to her with a bag of chips and a cup of soda.
And when Gloria comes home later that day, she sees a letter saying her daughter got suspended for 3 days. She goes to yell at her, but sees her leaning against Barbie, fast asleep. Barbie’s asleep, too, herself leaning against Sasha. She just smiles fondly, cleaning up the empty glass of soda and half full family size bag of chips.
Oh well. She’ll yell at Sasha when she wakes up.