Trinity (5)

“The party’s tomorrow night, if you want to come,” Maggie says. She stopped me after math, so now I’m standing in the hallway just blinking at her.

“Oh, um.” I feel dumb that I don’t know what to say, but I haven’t ever been invited to any parties apart from Pearl’s birthdays, of course.

She brings her hands up to play with one of her long, red curls. “Yeah! It’s, uh, not like a party party, though.” She lowers her voice. “Like, no alcohol or anything.”

I nod vehemently. Has she been to a party with alcohol? We’re fifteen.

“But, anyway, I have to get to history, but can you tell Pearl? I mean, I can talk to her in science but she’s invited too.” Maggie gestures down the hallway, and I turn to look. Pearl’s standing at her locker, and Henry Foley is leaning against the wall next to her, laughing. I frown.

“You can tell Henry, too, if you want. But I am trying to keep it small,” Maggie says as she steps away.

I’m not even sure if I respond; I’m already drifting towards Pearl and Henry.

“--know I can’t tonight, but maybe next week? Monday?” Pearl is saying.

“Yeah,” Henry says, his mouth tilted into a smile. Then his eyes latch onto mine, and he looks down at his tennis shoes. I note that they’re both black and neon yellow, which is technically against the dress code. Not that anyone cares.

“What’s up, Trinity?” Pearl greets, shutting her locker. Henry slinks off down the hall, blending into the white and blue and green uniforms of the other students.

“Maggie’s just invited me to a party tomorrow,” I say slowly. “You too, in fact.” Part of my brain is still thinking about Henry Foley, but I shove it away to focus on the strange excitement I feel at the fact that I have been invited to a party.

Pearl laughs and bumps my shoulder with hers, then starts down the hallway. “As if we’d go to a party.”

I follow, not wanting to be late for my next class, and glance at her. Her blonde ponytail swings when she walks, and her eyes are laughing.

“You don’t want to go?” I ask.

“We see enough of everyone at school, don’t you think?” she replies, raising her eyebrows at me.

I almost say, ‘What about Henry?’, but I see the clock in the hallway ticking forward. “We’re gonna be late for religion,” I tell Pearl, picking up speed. I don’t want another reason for Sister Bertha to glare at me.

. . .

It being Friday, Pearl and I head to the park after school as usual. There are some younger kids sitting at our table, so Pearl finds a spot in the sun under a large tree instead.

She pulls on sweatpants and takes off her blouse, revealing a pink tank top, and sits at the base of the tree. I sit down gingerly, not happy that I’m sitting in dirt but unwilling to do much about it. I’ll have to wash my uniform skirt, but I usually wash it on the weekends, so there’s really nothing to worry about.

“Are you really going to Maggie’s tomorrow?” Pearl asks me, pulling her legs into a pretzel shape in front of her.

I squint into the distance. “I--Maybe. I don’t know.” I had told Maggie during science that she should text me the details, but hadn’t explicitly said whether I was coming or not. Pearl had said thanks, but no thanks.

Pearl shrugs a shoulder. “That’s cool. I mean, it doesn’t sound like fun to me, personally, but Maggie’s usually nice.”

I pick at the grass near my feet. “So you won’t come with me?” I ask, staring into the dirt.

“No, I don’t think so.”

I look at her for a second, eyes snagging on her tank top. It has an upside-down smiley face embroidered onto it. I turn away again, towards the kids who had taken over our picnic table. One of them is standing on it. “But you’ll hang out with Henry?”

I see her head whip in my direction out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t turn.

“Are you still jealous?” Pearl asks. She doesn’t sound accusatory, just exasperated. And that makes it worse because it means it was less of a question and more of a statement.

I meet her eyes, big and almost-blue and slightly narrowed. “No! I’m not jealous. Why would I be? I do not like him, we’ve been over this,” I say through my teeth.

She sucks on her bottom lip and scoffs. “Ok, fine. You just seem to be… hung up on him.”

“Hung up on him? I’m not chatting with him in the hallway every day and getting his number and inviting him to hang out Monday and being all secretive about it--”

“So, what? I can’t have other friends? Henry and I are friends, ok, Trinity? Why is that so hard to believe?” Pearl pulls her up legs closer to her body, becoming smaller and smaller as she wraps her arms around her knees.

I shake my head violently at her. “If you’re friends, why didn’t you just tell me? I just feel like you’re trying to keep…” Pearl looks at me, her brows furrowed. “...keep some kind of secret from me,” I finish quietly.

Pearl’s expression barely moves. Her whole body barely moves, like she’s holding her breath, like she’s frozen in time, like she doesn’t know what to do next. Pearl always knows what to do next.

Carefully, Pearl relaxes her legs and kicks them out in front of her. Staring at her shoes, she says, “Yeah. Well, I knew you’d make a big deal about it. This is exactly why I didn’t tell you anything.”

Pearl won’t meet my eye anymore, so I have to stare at that dumb smiley face on her shirt. “If he’s your friend, then maybe I should be his friend. We could all go to Maggie’s party, together,” I say evenly. I don’t really want to be Henry’s friend, but I know this will fix everything, and we’ll go back to not arguing so much.

But instead, Pearl lets out a bark of laughter. “You don’t get it,” she says darkly. “We can have different friends, different interests. You can go to the party without me. And I can hang out with Henry without you. Isn’t that ok?”

My mouth hangs open, and I want to shout at her. No, of course it’s not ok. We’re supposed to be best friends, and we’re supposed to work through our differences and be there for each other and be honest with each other. Apparently she doesn’t care about any of those things.

Only I don’t have the energy to keep arguing. So I say, “Fine.” I can’t quite keep all the anger out of my voice.

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

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(previous part: https://theprose.com/post/433350/trinity-4)

(next part: https://theprose.com/post/435187/trinity-6)