Trinity (31)
Pearl tries to pull away from me, weakly. I would’ve let her, too. But she doesn’t try very hard, and she ends up just turned sideways in my arms, her hands over her face, refusing to look at me.
This isn’t like when she cried in her living room with Henry. Most obviously, that’s because I’m the one holding her this time. But also, those tears were louder, and she’d spoken thickly around them. Now, her voice has faded away, lost. She’s quiet, quieter than ever, but her body shakes and folds in on itself, and I think if I let go of her, she’d crumple to the ground.
Before, I hadn’t ever known what to do. But in this moment, it’s easy. I don’t let her go. I wait, silent, like her. I let her cry, I touch her hair. I press my forehead against her shoulder and try to absorb her sadness.
We stand like that for a while, and then she turns away fully, twisting out of my embrace. I drop my arms, feeling cold again, cold where she was warm against me.
“I can try,” she says. It’s so quiet I think for a moment it’s just the wind. Her face is still turned away, so I don’t see her speak the words.
“Try what?”
She turns a little, rubbing her eyes forcefully, her face still hidden behind her hands. “We can go back. Like it was. Like you want it,” she whispers.
I reach out to catch her hand, to hold it, but she jerks away, and I catch a glimpse of one of her eyes--red-rimmed, wet, wild.
“Oh.” Heavily, I sit back down at the picnic table. A shiver moves over me, and she notices.
Slowly, she pulls off her pink-and-purple striped sweatshirt, and holds it out to me. She’s standing there, in her school blouse and thin grey sweatpants, eyes on the grass at my feet. When I don’t take it, she drops it in my lap. “You’re cold,” she tells me, then stares up at the sky.
I glance upwards as well, but all that’s there is grey clouds. “I can’t take this, what about you?” I say, fisting the material in my hands.
“I’m not cold.”
I absolutely would’ve said the same thing back to her, but a gust of wind suddenly blows hard enough to bring tears to my eyes, and I let out a sound somewhere in the realm of ‘eep!’. Reluctantly, I pull the sweatshirt over my head.
I stare down at myself for a moment. When I look up, Pearl is staring at me too. “I like it on you,” she says quietly.
“Maybe we should just go to the library?” I pick at the hem.
She shakes her head and wipes her nose. “Oh no, not like this,” she says. I take in her red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks and pink nose.
“Alright.”
I think she means to smile, but she just twitches her mouth and hiccups out a few more tears. “Sorry. Oh God, a mess,” she mutters, and sits next to me. “So, how was school?”
I turn my body to face her fully, and wait until she looks me in the eyes. “Pearl,” I start, and then take a steadying breath. “I know you think it’s easier to not talk about things, and I do the same thing sometimes. But, something’s still wrong. You--we can’t just pretend nothing is wrong.”
She drops her gaze to the ground again. “I though that was what you wanted--going back to normal.”
I put my hands on her upper arms and shake her gently. “No, I mean yes, but I want us to hang out again. To talk, like this,” I pull back again, letting her go. She sways, and I almost reach out to her again. “I’m not forgetting everything. I want to apologize. And learn. And do better, you know I want to be better. I was a bad friend. A--a shitty friend!”
Her eyes flash to mine. “Trinity!” Her tone is almost scolding, and I laugh, feeling the blush on my cheeks.
“Sorry. Yes, that felt strange.”
She gives a little laugh, and it catches me off guard. A real laugh. The beginnings of a real smile on her face. My mouth pulls up instinctively. “I won’t curse any more,” I say.
She shakes her head, her expression serious again, but her eyes clearer. “You were never a bad friend, Trinity. It’s my fault. It always is.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
Her eyebrows furrow. “That’s what it is. I’m the reason everything goes wrong in my life. I’m not going to blame other people.”
“Everything goes wrong in your life?” I echo.
Pearl looks sadly at me, and touches a fingertip to the sleeve of her own sweatshirt, the one I’m wearing. “I’m sorry the way I said it before, about you having a perfect life, but what I mean is that you never have big things go wrong. And I do. Big things are always going wrong, and if they’re not wrong, they’re at least happening, and that’s too much sometimes. I just wish I had a normal life. Like yours.”
I open and close my mouth, holding back words and at the same time unable to say them regardless. “This isn’t about me. I want to know about you.”
Pearl pulls her hand back. She takes a moment to respond, sitting and sucking on her bottom lip. “It’s a lot of things. I ruined my family, for one. I’m just shameful, a waste of space in the house. And--”
“You are not,” I blurt. I meant to let her continue, but I can't let her say those things.
She wipes at more silent tears as they trickle down her face. “Yes, because my parents don’t even care what I do anymore. Nothing’s going to make them happy anymore, not until I convince them I’m not sick.”
“Sick?”
Pearl scratches her nose. “Bi.”
“But you’re not sick,” I say, still confused.
“My mom thinks I am. Maybe she’s right. I am a weird kid, after all.”
“Do you even hear yourself right now? ‘Weird kid?’ Pearl, you’re the first person to tell my anything about bi… bisexual… ism, or anything, you know, like that. And you were so sure about it. You even said yourself that Henry didn’t think you should tell me, and you did, because you were sure that something about you is different. And if it makes you weird, then it’s good weird. It doesn’t need fixed. You don’t need fixed.”
Her hands are over her eyes again, but I don’t think she’s crying this time. At least, I hope not. She sniffles. “It’s so hard, Trinity, when I keep going every week to YRJ and they keep telling me…” She takes a shuddering breath. “It’s hard to believe anything, anymore, other than what they tell me. I hate it.” Her jaw clenches. “I hate everyone there so goddamn much, and so I think, if I tell them what they want to hear, they won’t make me go anymore. But I still go, and I’m alone in there, and I can’t even remember who I’m supposed to be anymore some days.”
“Is anyone… I mean, I know you had a, well, falling out, but what about Amber?” I all but whisper the name, afraid it’ll upset her.
But Pearl just sighs deeply. “That’s it, that’s the thing. She’s gone. They’ve taken her out of my small group, and she’s been removed from the overnight program because she keeps trying to sneak out. It’s probably better, anyway, that I don’t see her, don’t be reminded that I’m not good enough for her… Oh God. God! I miss having her there. She was the only sane person, can you believe that?”
In most circles, a fearless, devious teenage girl that may or may not be an arsonist would be the last person to be called sane. “Surprisingly, I do believe you.” Everything is silent for a second, and I think over the conversation I’d had with Amber over the phone. “I don’t think she meant to hurt you, you know,” I say.
Pearl rubs her eyes again, and gazes at me curiously.
“And you’re too good for her, obviously. But maybe… maybe she wants to be your friend, and that’s it. Right? Maybe not everyone wants the same things.”
“Of course not everyone wants the same things. But she didn’t have to lead me on.” Pearl sniffs in an offended manner.
I shake my head. “Ok, enough about her, then. We never have to speak about her again, if you don’t want to.”
“No… No, it’s ok. I just wish I had someone there with me. At the retreat.”
I stare at my hands, in my lap. And my arms, striped in pink, striped in purple. The wind blows again, loud in my ears. “What if I went?”
“What?”
I look up at Pearl. She’s stock-still, and looks perplexed. I repeat, against my better judgement, “What if I went? What if I went to the retreat with you?”
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(first part: https://theprose.com/post/432343/trinity)
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(previous part: https://theprose.com/post/450572/trinity-30)
(next part: https://theprose.com/post/451408/trinity-32)