Chapter Text
The week of thanksgiving hits hard and fast. Three weeks after returning home from a whirlwind Halloween, and the end of the semester is already on top of her. Marina can barely keep up, but she’s finally landing in a rhythm.
Marina’s schedule is thus: class in the mornings because, unlike everyone else, she actually likes eight AMs, lunch, work from one to three, vocal lessons until five (on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays), dinner, and, at six on the dot, she’s glued to her phone from then on. She does homework between texts, sometimes while she and Pearl are on call together, not talking but enjoying each other’s company. Sometimes, she eats dinner with her little sister, when said little sister can bear to come back to the apartment in time. Eight—real name Tavi, but Marina isn’t going to call her something she doesn’t want to be called—is a busy freshman with eighteen credit hours of classes, soccer practice, and a bunch of clubs that Marina can’t keep track of. Most days, they see each other’s in the morning at around midnight, when they both stumble into the kitchen for energizing snacks, and that’s it.
Today is different though. It’s the end of November, one of the worst months of the year for a college student, and Eight is avoiding her homework like it’s an angry viper. Instead, she’s elbow deep in the junk heap that she calls a car. A recent pick-up from her favorite junkyard, she had it towed here and dropped right in a spot outside their apartment. Marina is pretty sure it’s against the rules to work on it in the parking lot, but Eight has the uncanny knack to get out of trouble when she needs to. One of the office ladies even walked by while she was working on it and waved, amused when Eight returned the gesture with a grease-stained hand.
“I’m just saying,” Eight says from under the car. The only thing Marina can see is her booted feet, poking out from under the bumper. “You spend a lot of time on the phone. You sure you’re not like... y’know?” She sticks a hand out. “Wrench, please.”
Marina presses it into her hand with maybe a bit too much force. “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”
Eight’s hand pulls back and Marina hears her grunt and struggle with something. “Well, you like her right?”
Marina scowls. “She’s my friend.”
Eight sighs. “You like her, right?”
Marina grimaces and kicks at an empty oil can. “I don’t know. We’ve only been friends for less than a month.”
“But you talk every day, for like... hours. And you’re always laughing. She makes you laugh, Mar. That’s gotta count for something. And you had a crush on her before, right?”
Marina sighs and crosses her arms. “When I was fourteen... Before Dad made me move.”
Something bangs under the car and Eight curses softly. “Right. I remember. I caught you writing those love letters.”
Marina crouches, jeans stretched tight over her knees, and points a strong finger at Eight. “We agreed you’d never mention that.”
Eight chuckles and sends Marina a smirk. “Aww, but it’s not every day you catch your big sister writing sappy shit to some girl. I needed the dirt.”
“We barely knew each other.”
“Exactly. I had to catch up on thirteen years of lost teasing.” She squints up into the belly of the car, rolls the wrench toward Marina with a clatter, and sighs. “For real though, I... It was kinda a relief. I knew I could trust you because I... It was weird being a teen in a new country, y’know? At least I knew you wouldn’t hate me for liking girls.”
Marina smiles softly and pats her foot. “Even if I didn’t have that crush, I wouldn’t have hated you. You’re my sister.”
“Yeah... Anyway, you and Pearl... I think there’s something there. I’ve never heard you so happy, especially after that mess with dad. I think you should just... chill. Let your friendship be what it’ll be and let it become what it’ll become.”
Marina sends her a long, inquisitive glance. “That’s good advice. So poetic. You sure you’re not an English major?”
Eight scowls. “I wish. Screwdriver, please.”
Eight is smart, really smart. So smart that she’s in school for astrophysics. The problem is that she likes to work with her hands, building things, fixing cars, tricking out motorcycles, but their father wants her to make something of herself. He thinks that she should be a rocket scientist, should build ships that reach all the way to the cosmos, not fix SUVs that drive children to softball practice. It’s slowly killing her, and it hurts to watch her struggle. Marina’s found her in the kitchen asleep on top of her homework multiple times, and she knows that she’s barely eating. The only joy she has these days is soccer practice and her car.
Eight is about a year younger than Marina and is technically her half-sister. Marina’s mother passed when she was still an infant (cancer), and her father, a military man, left Marina with her maternal grandparents and quickly found a new wife in an American ex-pat when he was stationed in Germany. Because of this, Marina only knew Eight as a distant face in a foreign land until she was fourteen, when her father was transferred back in the States and he finally decided to do his job as a parent. He had Marina shipped down to Texas, where she finally met Eight and her stepmother, and promptly fell into a massive dark period because she missed her grandparents, her friends, and the seasons. She only recovered when Eight became her best friend.
They grew close because they had to. Eight was new to the States and Marina was new to Texas, so they leaned hard on one another. After Eight caught Marina writing one the last letters she would ever write to Hime Houzuki, they clicked. They teased one another, they cried over lost crushes, and they learned how to get through the hot winters. Because Eight was raised by two Americans, she spoke perfect English without a hint of an accent, but she also was fluent in German, something she used to snag friends. Turned out, thirteen-year-olds were fascinated with learning curse words in any language, so she was quick to find her place.
Marina struggled, but she always had Eight. And, she had Halloween and school holidays to look forward to, when she would return back to her native New Jersey/New York to see her grandparents and her friends. Those were the only things that got her through those first few months.
Now though, they’re in college, away from Texas, away from their demanding father, away from the heat and the oppressive politics, away from New Jersey, in a new place entirely, a place that’s just theirs. But, they’re still figuring it out. At least they still have each other.
That evening, they eat dinner (Chinese take-out) together on the couch, staring at Food Network and critiquing the Chopped contestants like professional backseat chefs. Eight picks at her rice with her chopsticks and Marina shoves sushi down her throat as quickly as she can.
“Okay,” Eight says during a commercial, turning so that she’s facing Marina fully. “Here’s what I think. I think Pearl is into you.”
Marina nearly chokes on a piece of sushi. She coughs, wet and loud, and grabs for her water. “What?” she demands once her windpipe is clear.
“She’s into you! Your phone’s been vibrating like the cat does when he knows he’s getting fed! She’s been texting you nonstop! She’s into you.”
Marina doesn’t reply, just grabs for her phone and flips it over. There are at least twenty texts, all of varying lengths, from Pearl. She’s telling Marina about her day—she trekked into New York and performed in the subway with her band, and then ate a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts and almost threw up in Penn Station. Now, she’s staying at her dad’s NYC apartment because she doesn’t know if she can stomach the train back. dunno if i can handle the sight of newark right now, is the last text, and it makes Marina chuckle.
“See?” Eight demands, looking smug.
“How do you know she’s... y’know. Into girls? You’ve never met her.”
Eight points right at Pearl’s contact photo, the one she snapped quickly outside the diner. “That’s a lesbian. I know my kind.”
Marina stares at it, at Pearl’s cute smile and her piercings, her messy hair. She’s got the picture memorized already, but every time she looks at it it feels new, like she’s never seen such a beautiful girl before. She bites her lip and forces herself to look away.
“I can’t know for sure until she tells me,” Marina says, because she doesn’t want to make assumptions. “In high school, she had boyfriends.”
“High school is the church of regret. Marina...” Eight carefully reaches forward and turns the phone over to draw Marina’s attention back up. “Are you okay? You’ve been worried about this for weeks.”
It’s true. As soon as she got home, she started rambling about Pearl. Granted, she didn’t reveal that she knew her before all this until a few days ago, but they’ve been having this conversation for weeks. Marina, panicked about how squidgy her stomach got when she thought about Pearl, talked to Pearl, reviewed those precious few hours they had together in that corn maze, and Eight, exasperated by how clueless Marina seemed—going in circles about this, all because Marina couldn’t be sure, and because she didn’t quite know how to handle all of this anyway.
It's been easy to forget that Pearl used to be Hime, especially now that they’re apart and Marina is mostly confronted with only text on a screen or Pearl’s tinny voice through her phone’s speaker, but every now and then Marina looks at Pearl’s contact picture from just the right angle and all she sees is Hime. Hime in all her safe distance, her unavailability, the object of Marina’s attention because she was a benign outlet, someone Marina could project her budding attraction on without worry. There was no way Hime knew she existed, let alone would return her feelings, so she was a perfectly suitable crush.
Marina explored her confused, puberty-fueled body and emotions like any other fourteen-year-old. While other girls crushed on boy bands or celebrities, she crushed on the closest thing she had to a celebrity in school—the rich upperclassman who seemed too cool for everything.
But now? Now, suddenly, she’s faced with that same crush, except this time she isn’t at that safe distance. She’s right there, and she’s perfectly receptive to Marina’s feelings. In fact, she encourages closeness by virtue of their emotional openness. Despite the distance between them, they share everything, from the minutia of their days to their troubles and fears. Just yesterday, Pearl revealed that she was terrified of being seen as a failure, which was why she worked so hard with her band, because she wanted to prove to her father she was worth something. Marina, meanwhile, told Pearl her whole life story, leaving out only the stuff about her sexuality and her crush, because she wasn’t quite ready for that conversation.
They’ve only been friends for a few weeks, but it feels like Marina’s known Pearl forever. They just... clicked, like long lost friends. And that’s the problem, because the more they get to know one another, the more Marina feels weak in the knees, the more her insides learn how to tie knots, the more she begins to doubt herself.
The more she has to confront the fact that she’s never really gotten over Hime.
Moving away was good for her. She was able to put Hime Houzuki away and forget about that troubling crush. But she never really moved on, just locked that whole mess away in the back of her brain and forgot about it. But now, confronted with Pearl and her familiar voice and face, Marina’s worried that she’s just coasting on that residual affection. What if she doesn’t actually like Pearl, but the fact that she’s also Hime? What if she only likes the idea of Pearl? What if she finally gets over this and suddenly all of her feelings evaporate?
Eight thinks that’s bullshit and she’s told Marina that multiple times. The fact is, Eight’s told her, Marina likes Pearl’s face, which helped with the initial crush, but she probably read something in her vibe, something in her aura, picked up on something when she was that tiny little freshman that no one else did. Hime and Pearl are the same person, and Marina clearly saw something that no one else could see.
“And,” Eight said, “your gaydar must be really good. That helps.”
Marina groans and leans back against the couch. “I don’t know what to do,” she says, an answer to Eight’s question. She covers her face with her hands, suddenly exhausted. “What if she’s just being nice?”
“Nah uh.” Eight smacks her lightly on the knee. “Don’t do that worthless shit. She’s not just being nice. Being nice would be texting every few days. You two text every day for hours. You talk for hours. You’re best friends, I know, but I got this feeling. All you gotta do is just... mention being gay. Or something. If she is too, she’ll tell you.”
Marina groans again, because she’s not sure if it’s that simple. She’s not sure if she’s okay putting that word on herself, considering she’s only ever had one singular crush.
“Or don’t,” Eight adds. “But you gotta do something, Marina. You’re dying. Go write her a letter or something.”
Marina looks down at her hands, at her sushi on the coffee table. The cooking show is back on, but they’re not watching it anymore. “Maybe I should,” Marina sighs.
“I promise not to read it this time,” Eight adds, and Marina grabs a pillow and shoves it into her face, laughing.
That night, Marina sits at her desk with her earbuds in. All she can hear is Pearl’s breathing and the occasional siren because Pearl has the window open. Marina is surrounded by sound equipment because her desk doubles as her mixing station—her closest is her recording studio if she needs her voice for anything—but today she’s doing homework. This is a common situation—Pearl and Marina spend their evenings together doing their own things while on the phone. It makes them feel closer, like they’re within arm’s reach, and enables them to mumble about random things.
Right now, Pearl is eating a late dinner—halal she picked up from a cart on the corner with a hearty glass of water because Marina’s been annoying her to hydrate. Pearl has a terrible habit of not drinking because she thinks it slows her down, having to go the bathroom all the time, and it drives Marina up the wall, even all the way here, hours away from her.
“Damn that’s spicy. He really loaded me up,” Pearl mutters, and Marina hears her suck greedily on her straw. Her swallow is so loud that her microphone easily picks it up. “What’d you do today?” Pearl continues, breathing a little funny from the spice. “You didn’t really text me.”
“Ah,” Marina says, and taps her pencil on her music theory work, striking right on top of a treble clef. “I spent a lot of time with Eight. We haven’t seen each other in a while so I helped her with her car and then we ate dinner together.”
“That’s crazy to me, that she’s just fixing a car. Who does that?”
Marina smiles to herself and scribbles a small eighth note into her workbook. “You’d be amazed how productive you can be when you’re putting something off.”
Pearl laughs. “I got an idea. You have no idea how good I am at procrastinating.”
She doesn’t, and that surprises her. “Oh yeah?”
“Hell yeah. I didn’t do any of my homework in school. I was so bored. So, so bored. Especially in math class. I think I slept more than I was awake.”
Marina considers that, thinks back to that time, sees the Hime of her memories, remembers how she never seemed to carry a backpack and her locker was always stuffed full of books—but not books she was supposed to be reading for class. It was all comics, manga, YA novels, the occasional poetry book. At the time, she didn’t make anything of it, but now...
“You read a lot though, right?” she asks, letting her memories get the better of her.
Pearl lets out a small little noise of surprise. “What the hell... How’d you know that? I kept that a secret from everyone.”
Marina feels her stomach flip over. “Uh...” she drones, begging her mind to come up with some kind of excuse. “I... Uh... I saw in your locker once...”
“Oh,” Pearl breathes out, and Marina feels herself relax. Crisis averted. “I forgot about that. Yeah... I spent a lot of time in the salon, y’know? All that hair... I had to get it trimmed every two weeks to get rid of the dead ends and had to have my roots touched up. Heh... It was a losing battle, but Dad always wanted a blondie... Shoulda thought of that before marrying my mom, huh? Asian all the way down. But I liked it... Still do it. But I cut it myself now because I don’t like anyone getting close to my head with that sharp shit.
“But yeah... I read a lot because I was in the salon all the time. And I hated those dumb magazines they had there, so I always picked up library books and shit. Most of the time it was comics, but I liked Percy Jackson too.”
That’s a lot to take in, so Marina takes a few beats to think, to compute that. “Your dad made you dye your hair?”
“Please.” Pearl scoffs and Marina hears her stuff more food in her mouth. “I wanted it to be blonde. He just really liked it, was all. He paid out of the ass for me to maintain it. Mom thought I was overcompensating for something.”
“Were you?”
“No, I just wanted to be blonde.”
Marina grins into her fist. Pearl sounds so frustrated, like she’s had this conversation a lot, but she also seems to be amused by it, by Marina’s interest, by her attention. She sighs in Marina’s ear and Marina hears her push away from the table.
They fall back into silence then, Marina focused on her homework and Pearl humming softly while scrolling through her social media. Her voice relaxes Marina, and, soon enough, she feels the stress of the day, of all that worry, fall away. This is Pearl after all, Marina’s friend, her confidante. She’s never felt as comfortable around anyone as she does around Pearl, despite the newness of their friendship, and being like this, so far apart but still feeling that closeness, helps her relax.
Pearl hums nonsense tunes, plucking them out of the air, and Marina stops to listen, the notes of the page mixing with the ones sailing into her ear. Pearl has a beautiful voice, soprano and clear, obviously well-trained, probably from a young age, and Marina wonders, not for the first time, if she could convince Pearl to provide it for one of her tracks. Marina has a modest following online for her electropop tracks, most of which she sings on top of or samples her own voice for, but she wants to branch out, to collaborate, and Pearl’s high voice would fit perfectly with her bubbly, industrial style.
The problem, of course, is that Pearl’s band also has a modest following, and her voice in their tracks is completely different. She sings gutturally, pulled straight from her throat and graveled from between her teeth—hardened, screamed, loud. Marina isn’t sure if she would go for something else, because of her image, but also because she’s always brushed off Marina’s compliments on her natural voice as niceties. She doesn’t have the confidence in the tune-carrying power of her voice, only trusts it for its strength and volume.
In fact, Marina has offered multiple times to—
“Marina... There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you...”
All thoughts stumble to a halt when Pearl speaks, apropos of nothing. For a second, Marina can’t hear anything over the line except Pearl’s breathing, and she thinks that she imagined that, but then Pearl continues.
“You seem like you remember a lot from when we were in school together... Do you remember how I... Do you remember all those boys that would hang around me?”
“Your boyfriends?” Marina asks, without thought, far too concerned with the sinking sensation in her stomach.
Pearl’s scowl is so strong, Marina can practically feel it through the line. “You too, huh? They weren’t my boyfriends— Well, one of them was, but we barely touched each other.”
That strikes Marina and she has to stand. “Wait,” she says as she begins to pace, “I thought you had a new boyfriend every week...”
“Ha, they wish. We weren’t actually dating. I just let them hold my hand. I was this like... This prize, I guess. If they could convince me to hang around them for a week, they got all this clout or whatever. I put up with it because they kept me distracted.”
“I— Pearl, that sounds miserable...”
“Yep! It was.”
“Why— Why are you telling me this?”
“I... I’m not sure. I just— I wanted you to know that I’m not like... I never bounced from boy to boy. I’m not like that. I wanted to set the record straight. You have the advantage over me here because you know a lot about me while I... I didn’t know much about you until we met, so I have to correct all the bad shit you might’ve seen.”
Marina, still pacing, lets out a small sigh. “Pearl, I’m not judging you for anything... You had it rough in high school. I know you’re different now.”
“Good, because... I like you, Marina, and I—”
Marina doesn’t hear the rest. Her mind gets stuck on that. I like you, Marina. I like you, Marina. I like you, Marina. I like you, Marina.
“—even interested in...” Pearl trails off right as Marina finally manages to get her ears working again. “Yeah, I’m rambling now. I haven’t been on a date in the long time, okay? I’m not some scumbag that chews through people like that.”
“Okay... I never thought you were... Pearl, why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know!” Suddenly, Pearl sounds agitated. “I just wanted you to know! And now you do!”
Marina is speechless for a second. She stops pacing and plants her hands on her hips, trying to make her voice sound strong and sure. “Are you okay? What’s this about?”
Pearl groans and Marina hears something thud, like she fell onto the couch. “I care what you think, Marina. That’s all. You’re like... One of three people, but I care what you think of me. I don’t want you to think I’m... I’m better now, okay?”
“Okay.” Marina says firmly, desperate to comfort her. “I— I know that. You’re... You really care what I think?”
Pearl laughs then. “Yeah, yeah I do. I care a lot. You’re cool and calm and you... You’re one of my best friends.”
Marina falls back into her seat, smiling to herself. She closes her notebook, far too focused on this conversation, and crosses one leg over the other. “You’re one of my best friends too,” she says quietly, breathing it into the mic.
Marina hears Pearl let out a small gust of air, like she’s relieved by that. “Good... I— I know we like, just met, but I’ve never clicked with someone like I clicked with you.” She lets out a small laugh, like she’s laughing at herself. “That’s sappy as hell but that’s how it is! You mean a lot to me!”
Marina can’t help it—she laughs a little. “I thought you were punk.”
“Listen, Reena, there’s nothing more punk than being genuine about your feelings and telling your friends that you care about them! Everyone is so repressed. Punks are free.”
That makes Marina laugh, from deep in her gut, and she leans back in her seat, staring up at the ceiling. She pictures Pearl, in some airy, rich apartment in New York City, holding her phone close to her face, telling Marina how much she cares after only a couple weeks. They’re so far apart, but suddenly Marina feels incredibly close to her, as if she’s on the other side of the wall and not a few states away.
“Thank you,” Marina says, muttering it right into Pearl’s ear.
“For what?”
“For being my friend.”
Pearl lets out a small laugh. “Anytime, Marina. Thanks for being mine, you sap.”
Dear Pearl,
I don’t know how to start this, so I’m just gonna write until I figure it out. I’ve been thinking about this all day. Eight says that I’m thinking too hard, but she’s also the one who talks in poetic lines and is studying astrophysics, so I think she’s full of it. She thinks hard about everything. It’s like she never stops.
It runs in the family. I can’t stop thinking about you. And me. Us. I really like you. Earlier today, I told you you were one of my best friends, and that was the truth, but I also... feel a certain way about you that doesn’t fall under the ‘best friends’ umbrella. Last night, I dreamed about kissing you, which wasn’t weird because I used to dream about kissing you all the time but—
Wait, you don’t know that part.
This is the hard part. When I was fourteen, I had a massive crush on you. You were so COOL and nice, and you always smiled at me. At least, I thought you were smiling at me. Knowing you now, I know that you were just smiling neutrally, trying to keep up that little act to please your father. Smiling like that—it made you look beautiful, but thinking back, I know it hurt you. I like your smile now. That fake smile used to make me really excited to see, but when I look at your contact pic now, I know that that’s you. You’re more than a small smile. You’re scowls and grimaces and you’re loud and brash and I like that.
Like I said, I had a huge crush on you. You were cool, nice, and pretty, and I was scared of liking girls. I’m still kinda scared of it. I don’t know how to tell people, and I don’t know how to handle it. But, talking to you makes me feel safe, and I can tell that you always listen to everything I say. You listen and you think and you’re careful about what you say when you know I need you to be, and that thoughtfulness keeps me up because no one’s ever treated me that way.
So yeah. I dreamed about kissing you last night. Do you wonder about that too? Do you dream about it? We’ve only been friends for a few weeks, but I already like you so much. Hell, sitting across from you at that diner, I was already catching feelings. I’m not sure if it’s a remnant of the past and that scares me. But, in my dream, I was kissing you, not Hime. I had a crush on Hime because I liked how you looked. I fell for the glamor of you, but you were also so unreachable. I knew that if I put my affection on you, you would never return it, which is what made me fall more.
Now though, you could return that favor. And that terrifies me. And makes me so excited. What if I told you and you said you liked me back? God, I sound like a middle schooler. Or like I’m right back to fourteen-year-old Marina, writing Hime Houzuki love letters under the covers. Yeah, I did that. I hid them between my mattress and the box spring. I was ashamed, but that didn’t stop me. Nothing could stop me, except how intimidating you were.
Silly huh? You, intimidating? But, back then, you were. Hell, you still are in a lot of ways. You’re still cool and nice. And I still love to see you smile at me. Every time you send me a selfie, I swear my heart stops. Sappy, I know, but today’s the day of sap.
I’ll never give you this, and I’ll probably never read it back, but it feels good to get it out. I wonder how you would react, if I actually asked you. I also wonder if I’m moving too fast. We barely know each other, but like you said earlier, I’ve never clicked with someone like I’ve clicked with you.
I’ll probably never do anything about this. I love being your friend and I don’t want to lose you. Imagine if I asked and it scared you off. Imagine if it disgusts you. Nah, we can just be friends. It’s nice, talking every day, and I wouldn’t trade your friendship for anything. You already mean that much to me.
Thank you for being my friend. I’m sorry if I complicate things.
Love,
Marina