Trinity (45)

The waffles are delicious. I’ve gotten banana and chocolate chip, and I can’t put down my fork, just keep eating.

And I’m glad to have something to do, because I feel like the odd one out, more so than usual. At first I hadn’t felt like I was really part of Maggie’s group of friends, also, and sometimes I still feel that way, but this… this is different.

Even visually, I’m sure I stand out. Not that there’s many people to notice; there’s, like, six people here apart from Mai and Quan. But Jackson, who doesn’t have a uniform, is in black jeans and chain accessories and an oversized t-shirt with random holes cut out of it. I guess that’s fashion. Henry ditched his tie in the car, and has unbuttoned his school dress shirt to reveal a plain black shirt. I note that he’s wearing that bracelet that Jackson gave him, too.

And Pearl, as always, changed as fast as possible. In the car she replaced her skirt with baggy jeans, and took off her blouse, leaving her in a red-and-orange striped tank top. She’s tied her hair up, too, into a loose bun. Stray wisps of golden hair frame her face. She looks, too be honest, completely different than she did at school. Not to mention she’s smiling and clearly just more comfortable here.

I wonder if there’s anywhere that I look that comfortable. Probably not.

I itch the spot on my leg where the elastic of my ankle-high Saint-Paul-issued socks is digging into my skin.

“Trinity? Tell us about Abbey’s party?” Pearl nudges me with her elbow.

I laugh nervously. “Oh, yeah.” I hadn’t really thought this through, that Jackson and Henry would be here. I mean, I’d anticipated Henry being present, but still. Do they need to know about the party?

“I went last year, and it was… well, memorable,” Henry says, twirling the straw in his milkshake and frowning. Jackson scoots closer to Henry in their booth, and Henry leans into him.

The action seems natural and easy. It makes them both happy. I wonder if anyone will ever do that, but for me. Some kind of feeling passes over me, and I wonder for a moment if I am jealous of them. Maybe of what they have.

“Trinity?” Pearl is leaning towards me, waving her fork in front of my face.

“Oh. Memorable, I guess. Yeah,” I respond, suddenly not sure what I want to say. I poke at what’s left of my waffle with my own fork, but have no intention of eating it.

I’m saved for a moment, as someone walks in the door to Waffle Mixers, and Jackson climbs over Henry upon spotting them. I twist in the booth as Mai calls out, “Viv!”

“My sibling,” Jackson explains as he takes a plastic bag out of one of Viv’s hands. It looks like groceries, and I can’t tell if it’s for their family's personal use or for the restaurant’s.

Viv, at first, is hard to get a read on. Tall, with short hair, just barely poking out from under a beanie, and a long dark coat, despite it being pretty warm. Warm enough for Pearl to be in a tank top. Though she does just like to wear them.

And underneath the coat, a green shirt. It reminds me of Maggie’s green shirt, Maggie’s green shirt that she was wearing Saturday night, and the same green shirt that got pushed up her back, and I’m seeing it all over again, her and Charles Lee, and I can’t get the image out of my head. I think I flush everywhere. I feel suddenly a little sick, and I don’t think it’s from the waffles.

After some fuss from Mai and Quan, Viv disappears without a word to any of us, despite Jackson half-heartedly trying to introduce us. Jackson clambers back into the booth, Henry grunting and shoving at him playfully, as he hadn’t had time to get out of the booth before Jackson deciding to re-enter.

“I’ve never met Viv,” Pearl says, her tone accusatory. “Why don’t–”

Jackson holds up his hands. “Listen, they don’t really like meeting people. Don’t hold it against them.”

He keeps talking, but I’m blinking down at my lap, at the blue and green plaid of my skirt, the colors blurring together, the green reminding me again of Maggie. Why am I mad at Maggie? Am I mad at Maggie? Why is this skirt hideous, and why have I had to wear it every single day? Why did she kiss him?

“Hey.” Pearl’s voice is soft, and close to my ear. “Can I get out to go to the bathroom?” She’s shuffled closer to me on our side of the booth, and I hadn’t noticed at all. Her hand brushes my sleeve lightly.

I nod, trying to refocus, and slide to my feet. She follows. “Do you need to…?” She gestures toward the back corner, where there’s signs for bathrooms.

Her wide eyes are filled with something tender. Concern. She knows. How does she know? Understanding that she wants to talk, I follow her to the bathroom.

The bathroom’s small, three stalls and one sink. But it’s empty.

“What’s wrong?” Pearl asks, and part of me hates that she knows something’s wrong, because now I’m going to have to try and explain it.

I grapple for words. “I… We… Well, Maggie…” I stare at the floor. How do I explain it to her when I don’t understand it myself? What I’m feeling. What I’m not feeling?

And how is it fair for me to complain, after all the things that have happened--that still happen--to her. She goes to that terrible church camp every weekend, while I get to stay home and listen to music and watch TV and occasionally go to parties.

“What did she do?” Pearl asks, and there’s a hardness in her voice that I’m not used to.

“It’s not really about her. I just am… confused.” Pearl goes silent, and still, too. I was ready, earlier, to tell her about Maggie and Charles, despite the promise I made to Maggie. But now I have a different hang-up. What if, somehow, I say the wrong thing, like I always do? What if I mess this up, and Pearl is mad, somehow?

I meet Pearl’s eye, and I realize: we’ll figure it out. Right? We always do. In the past, she’s needed me, and now, I need her.

“I think… I think maybe I’m not… like,” I swallow, and move my hands in useless circles, unable to summon the right words. I start again. “At Abbey’s party, I was with Maggie a lot of the time, and--and then, I found her with Charles Lee.”

Pearl’s eyebrows draw the tiniest bit closer together, but her expression remains mostly the same. Attentive, open, a bit apprehensive. “Is this a bad thing?” she asks after I’d fallen silent again.

I’m holding in some kind of terrible feeling. It’s been bubbling under the surface for so long, but suddenly I’m not sure I can hide it. I didn’t even know I was trying to hide it. But everything hurts, almost physically so, and I’m overcome with the want to cry, and I’m still not sure why.

“It’s all wrong,” I muster, and my voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like it’s coming from miles away, a broken and sorry thing.

Pearl takes my hands, and holds them in hers. She tips her face into my line of vision; I’ve tilted my gaze to the floor again. “Trinity, I don’t understand. Do you like him?” Even as she says it, I can tell she doesn't actually believe that I do.

I know inexplicably that I don’t, and yet a jolt of doubt passes through me. Is that what would explain this feeling? In the end, though, I shake my head no.

I think my hands are clammy in hers, but I clutch her tighter, close my eyes, take a breath. Gather my thoughts. My breathing is shaky, but I no longer feel as though every word will lead me to tears.

“I was surprised. I thought Maggie was just like me--that I was just like Maggie. So when I saw her kissing Charles Lee… it made me think that I’m not like her. That I’m not normal.”

“None of us are normal. Me. Henry, Jackson. You don’t have to be like Maggie,” Pearl reassures me, swinging our linked hands a little.

I stare at her cheek, because it’s easier than looking her in the eye. “Remember I was mad about you and Amber? Well, not mad. I was never mad. Just confused. Surprised, just the same. I think I just don’t feel like kissing anyone. But what if I never feel like it?”

Pearl’s brows are pulled even further together. “You were… surprised?” She startles me when she laughs. A tiny, short laugh.

Suddenly I feel stupid, and I slide my hands out of hers. “I know some people do… things. Kissing and things. But I thought someone like Maggie was like me. But I don’t think there are people like me.” I’m so confused at this point, and desperate for Pearl to understand, that even though I don’t like talking about it, I plow on. “I know it’s dumb, because I guess I don’t know how good kissing is yet, since I haven’t… I’m trying to say, I thought I’d want to kiss Kelly, but I don’t. I want to want to but I don’t, and I used to not worry about it because I knew I would at some point, but Amber said some things and now I think there’s a possibility that it’ll never happen. Ever.”

Pearl tucks her hands into her armpits. Like some kind of combination of crossing her arms and giving herself a hug. “What did Amber say?”

“She told me I might be… asexual. And she said the word aromantic, also.” I worry my bottom lip. I don’t think Maggie would really be that mad to find out I’d told Pearl about her, but I do think Amber might break both my legs if I told Pearl that she’s aromantic.

“I thought those were the same,” Pearl says thoughtfully, loosening her arms, and letting them fall to her sides. Somehow her being familiar with the words at all surprises me, but then again, Pearl knows a lot more about this stuff than I do.

What she doesn’t know, though, what no one knows, (not even Sister Bertha) is that I looked both words up again. One day during lunch in the computer lab, a week or so after I’d talked with Amber. I’d been extra careful not to get snuck up on, by a nun or a Maggie or anyone else.

What’s most confusing, as Amber has pointed out, is that it doesn’t matter what you do. It matters how you feel. It’s about the attraction; asexual people don’t feel sexual attraction, and aromantic people don’t feel romantic attraction. I explain this to Pearl, stumbling over the ‘sex’ part of words, even though it’s necessary to explain the topic. “They’re different,” I tell her. “You can be one, or the other, or both.”

I hadn’t had a lot of time, because I was paranoid someone would find me, but I did read a few posts on the internet written by asexual people and aromantic people. “I just, now that I know it’s possible to be one of those… or both… I don’t know, it just seems impossible.”

Pearl smiles softly. “You don’t have to have it all figured out yet, Trinity. I know it’s hard.”

I rub my hands on my skirt. They’re still clammy. “But you knew, right? About being bisexual? You knew for a long time.”

Pearl shakes her head. “Part of me knew, but it still took a long time to figure out. To, um, come to terms with. I still get confused sometimes.” She smiles again, and I give her a watered-down smile in return.

“What seems impossible about it?” she asks me.

I consider for a moment. “I guess I thought everyone was more like me. I didn’t think anyone wanted… anything. Like, like they tell us in church, and in school. No, you know, sex, or, like, kissing a lot, or anything, until you’re married. So it makes sense. To not want any of that until you’re married.”

Pearl snorts out a laugh, then abruptly covers her mouth with both hands. “I’m sorry, I…” But, as always, her laugh is infectious. I scoff more so than laugh, but her mouth quirks at the sound and she continues, “No, that makes sense. But that’s not how people feel, a lot of people. I think most everyone at school has wanted to have sex and kiss people.”

I feel like squirming thinking about that, but I physically stop myself from doing so.

Pearl still notices. “It’s ok, Trinity, to not want to. To be either of those things, or one, or neither. I don’t think I said that before, but it’s ok. Nothing’s wrong with you.”

She knows just what to say. She knows just what to say because she already went through something like this. Not the same, but similar. She knows just what to say, and that makes me feel worse that I didn’t say these things to her.

“You know we’re still best friends, no matter what? Remember?” Pearl says, clasping her hands in front of her.

Somehow that’s what brings tears to my eyes, sharp and sudden. I laugh thickly and nod. “Of course we are. Now. You better go back out there before anyone misses you. I'll just be a second,” I say, trying to disguise the fact that I’m crying a little.

She hesitates for a moment, then steps forward and gives me a hug, and I dig my fingers into her back and I don’t want to let her go, but I do.

“I know this kind of stuff is hard, but I’ll always be here to help,” she tells me softly. Then, she leaves me, the door closing with a swish behind her. And I’m left staring at myself in a mirror, and I’m not sure if the girl in the glass is happy or sad or more or less confused, but she’s me.

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

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