Trinity (28)

I’m the first one to notice Pearl when she walks into the cafeteria.

I’ve tuned out of my lunch table’s conversation, since it’s mostly Mary Kate and Maggie and Charles arguing--they’ve been doing a lot of that. And in the moments they’re not trying to best one another, Abbey’s trying to ask the other girls questions and Erica and Becca are pointedly ignoring her, and Rachel is ignoring her too, but not on purpose, she’s just always distracted.

“Did anyone see Ryan’s new tie?” Abbey swivels her head to each of us, hoping for a response.

“I didn’t notice,” I murmur as she meets my eye. I look around the table at everyone else, then let my focus wander. It’s then that I spot Pearl dodging into the cafeteria, striding confidently forward--in this direction.

She shouldn’t be here. She should be in the office, because it’s her free period and she always volunteers in the office during her free period.

I can tell the instant Pearl notices me, because her eyes flick to meet mine, then double-take. Her stride falters, she slows. She blinks and approaches the table.

“Maggie, can I talk to you for a moment?” Pearl asks, hands clasped loosely behind her back.

Maggie sets down a forkful of sub-par cafeteria spaghetti and glances at me, as if I’d have answers. When I stare uselessly back, she says slowly, “Yeah, sure. What about?”

“Oh, they just need you in the office for a moment,” Pearl says with a smile. Her lips are shiny--lip gloss. I don’t think I’ve seen her smile in ages.

Maggie’s face colors. She stands. “Oh, um.”

Mary Kate whispers something to Charles, who lifts his eyebrows in response. Maggie raises her chin, pinches her lips together, and follows Pearl, who’s heading for the door.

I launch to my feet and follow. “I don’t think they do need to see her in the office,” I say, trying to catch up to Pearl. Pearl delivers notes sometimes, at best. She does not collect people to go to the office.

Without turning, Pearl replies, “You can go sit with your friends, Trinity. I didn’t ask for you.” Her words are clipped.

She’s still mad. Properly mad. I want to be mad back at her, but instead it just stings. I stop in the hallway, having followed them all the way out of the cafeteria. Mr. Dennis is sitting on a bench at the end of the hallway, watching.

I’m a student at lunch, so he’s not going to let me go any further. I’m sure Pearl has already charmed her way past him with stories about office-volunteer duties, so if Pearl doesn’t say I’m allowed to leave lunch, then I won’t be leaving.

“Am I in trouble, Pearl?” Maggie asks nervously, tugging her skirt lower, as if the extra half inch will make it comply with the dress code.

“Oh, I’m not really sure, actually,” Pearl replies sweetly, then nods once at Mr. Dennis. He nods back, and Pearl and Maggie continue into the next hallway.

“Better go finish your lunch, missy,” Mr. Dennis says to me in his gravely voice, pushing his glasses up on his nose. I swear he must’ve been a gargoyle in a former life. I turn on my heel, and leave.

. . .

I catch Pearl after school. For once Henry isn’t around. It’s just her, cramming books into her backpack.

I hesitate, though, and stand next to her locker with nothing to say. Someone bumps into me, and I’m thrown into her locker door, and it rattles loudly.

She looks up at me, her gaze sharp.

I open my mouth. “Pearl,” is all I find to say. It sounds pleading, even to me.

She tucks a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. “I’ve gotta catch my bus,” she says, suddenly unable to meet my eye.

She’s about to shut her locker, so I throw out a hand to stop it. The door catches on my fingers, the impact stinging.

“Trinity--!” she exclaims in horror, pulling back the locker door and taking my hand. My fingers are thinly striped pink and white where the door hit. I can feel my pulse in my hand, thudding away. I grimace, but the pain isn’t bad.

She looks at me with her wide eyes, her fingers wrapped around mine, her expression strange. Her lips part wordlessly, and she drops my hand. “Are you ok?” she asks, shaking her head and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

I flex my fingers. “Yeah, fine. Sorry. I just--I’d left you a note. In your locker.”

She frowns. Her eyes haven’t left my hand. “A note?”

“Yeah. I just don’t know if you’ve, well, if you read it.”

“You couldn’t just send a text?” She turns away from me and attempts to zip up her backpack, yanking it too hard. I hear the zipper snap. She curses.

I shift from foot to foot.

Pearl hugs her backpack to her chest to keep the books from spilling out. I see the clock behind her tick forward, and realize she’ll miss her bus if we stand here much longer.

“I just want you to read it, ok?” I tell her before walking away.

. . .

“Absolutely no bunnies, that’s so cliché,” Kelly says. We’re at the library, not the one by school, but another one closer to my house. I think that puts him even further away from his house than Saint Paul’s does, but he didn’t protest when I suggested it.

The library by my house has study rooms you can use, plus it’s less likely that we'd run into someone from school. I’d considered offering my house, but I didn’t want my mom getting the wrong idea. She’d already raised her eyebrows a considerable amount when I told her that I needed to meet up with someone to plan decorations.

We have to meet up today, because Maggie wants plans by Friday. And it’s Thursday.

So here we are.

I was nervous, at first, when I saw him. I wondered if the old lady at the check out desk thought we were a couple when we asked for a study room. Maybe she did, and that made me more nervous, for some reason.

But now we’ve been here for an hour, and we have a list of ideas--mostly bad ones, but ideas nonetheless--and he’s the same as always. He doesn’t seem to notice that I keep stealing glances at him, sizing him up. That I trip over my words when he asks questions.

In the end, we produce a reasonable outline for Easter decorations. He’s scribbled it across the back of an old sheet of notes he found in the bottom of his backpack, which I’m sure will annoy Maggie, but that only makes me smile.

It’s not really that weird, chatting with him. He makes sense to me. He’s smart, and says things before he thinks about them, and likes to reference books and shows that I’ve never seen before. He doesn’t expect me to understand all those things, though, he just says them, and then laughs to himself, and sometimes apologizes. And I smile at him and remember all the times we used to swing together. Just two kids at recess.

“That’s it, then?” Kelly says, surveying his notes.

I lift a shoulder. “I guess.” He just nods. “Is your dad coming to pick you up?”

He leans back in his chair. “Yeah, yeah. Eventually.”

I realize then that he’s not planning on leaving yet. And I was planning to stay. “Oh. Well, I’ve got some homework to do…” I wait for him to realize that he should go get his own study room, or wait somewhere else in the library.

He pushes up the sleeves of his faded blue sweatshirt and nods at the textbook I’m pulling from my backpack. “Algebra?”

I set it out on the table and nod solemnly, realizing just how much I have to do. I have four days' worth of homework problems to catch up on by tomorrow.

Kelly scoffs and pushes his black hair out of his eyes. “Ah, back when math was so simple! Can I see?”

“Simple?” I repeat, but turn my homework towards him.

He grins. “Sorry. I can help though, I love algebra.”

I don’t know how anyone could love algebra, but I nod. I’m going to need help if I want any of this done. And besides, he’s already here…

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

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