Trinity (22)

“Is everything alright, Trinity?” My mom isn’t looking at me, her eyes are on the road, but she must’ve sensed something through my silence.

“Fine,” I tell her, brushing imaginary dirt off my skirt.

She sighs, and I stare out the window, thinking.

Pearl hadn’t said much else to me before I left. She barely even looked at me. After she’d calmed down a bit, she’d briefly recounted the night of the Spring Fling.

I’d left first that night, followed by Henry and Jackson--because apparently Jackson can drive. I hadn’t known that he's old enough. And Amber had been in a good mood after defacing the school I guess, and she and Pearl had walked down to the park--our park. And Pearl didn’t elaborate much else after that, but had sniffled and said, “She told me we couldn’t. That it wouldn’t be fair to me. Fair!”

After a minute Pearl had taken a deep breath and composed herself, smoothing down her ponytail and instructing Henry to tell her why he’d come over. He didn’t mind changing the subject, and had produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket at the same time that a knock came at the door.

At that point, Pearl had gotten up and let Jackson in, who’d dropped Henry off and then stopped at the local gas station for Cheez-Its, which is, apparently, Henry’s favorite snack food.

And then Henry had passed the paper around, which was a note that someone had left in his locker. He didn’t know who wrote it, and I’d stared at it, half expecting the handwriting to match the sharp marker letters of the edited sign from the Spring Fling, but it didn’t.

All it said was: I know what you are.

I’d immediately advised him to take it to Principal Sumner. Pearl had immediately dismissed that as a bad idea. Jackson thought it was a prank from his football friends.

They were still discussing it when my mom arrived, and I’d effortlessly slipped out of the room, only William watching me as I left.

. . .

“Trinity! You never answered my text!” Maggie sits herself in the seat next to me and leans in, pulling the science notes out of my hands. It takes me a second to remember what she’s talking about. Kelly.

I make a point of turning my attention to Mr. Gleason, as if that will make him start class and make this conversation disappear.

“Ah, I knew it!” I look over at her, and now Maggie’s grinning her toothy grin.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you’re blushing,” she states seriously, pointing a manicured finger at my face.

I can feel my face getting redder.

Pearl enters then, her skirt crumpled and hair loosely falling over her shoulders. She’s carrying one of her shoes--a blue flat--in her hand, trying to shake something out of it or off the bottom of it, it’s hard to tell.

She pauses in the doorway, shaking her arm vigorously enough that her pencil case falls out of the bundle of school materials in her hands.

Maggie sees. “Oh, I borrowed your seat for a second,” she calls to Pearl, standing.

Pearl gathers her pencil case from the ground, which has spilled a few pens, but she leaves them there. “It’s fine. We can swap,” she says as she makes her way to the back of the classroom. She sits down next to Mary Kate, who instantly gives Maggie a look of betrayal.

Maggie rolls her eyes and sits herself back down next to me.

I watch Pearl use one of her pens to pry a piece of chewed gum off the bottom of her flat. Then Mr. Gleason starts class.

. . .

For lunch, I follow Maggie to her table. She’d insisted again that I sit with her at the end of fourth period.

Mary Kate puts down her graphic novel when I set my lunch down on the table. “Hi, Trin. I didn’t know you’d be sitting with us.”

I don’t miss the silent argument that she and Maggie are having with their eyes.

“Just for today,” I reply tightly.

Maggie flaps her hands in the air. “Nonsense! We always have an empty chair, anyway.”

I look around the table. Mary Kate’s returned to her graphic novel, and Abbey’s pretending not to be reading over her shoulder. Rachel is scribbling away at what looks like calculus homework--she’s ahead in math--and Erica and Becca are sharing earbuds, watching a video on a phone. Maggie’s trying and failing to twist the lid off her thermos.

I know all of them, or, I know all about all of them, at least. I guess there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t be sitting with them.

“Did you hear Katherine’s started a bible study group?” Abbey asks no one in particular.

“A what?” says Rachel.

Mary Kate closes her book and reaches across me to unscrew Maggie’s thermos for her, then hands it back. “Yeah, she even made up little posters. She’s probably tacking them up around school now.”

“Who wants a second religion class?” scoffs Becca, looking up from her video. Erica elbows her, and she returns her attention to the phone screen.

“She gave me one,” Mary Kate continues, digging into a messy binder. She pulls out a crumpled page, and Maggie takes it from her.

“Meetings twice a week? Geez.” Maggie shakes her head and sets the paper in the middle of the table.

I reach out and pick it up, touching a finger to the page. “You said Katherine made this?” I ask.

“And she didn’t even bother to type it,” fusses Abbey, stretching her neck to look across the table at the paper in my hands.

“Yeah, handwritten,” I mutter, and drop the page. So. Now I know who Henry’s mystery note-writer is.

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(first part: https://theprose.com/post/432343/trinity)

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(previous part: https://theprose.com/post/445706/trinity-21)

(next part: https://theprose.com/post/447284/trinity-23)