Chapter Text
Every year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Pearl works at a Christmas tree farm. The truth is that she works best on her feet and outside, where she can run a little wild. The haunted maze and the tree farm are the same in a lot of ways: she gets to run around between trees or corn, and she doesn’t have to sit around all day. Sometimes, she gets to wield a saw. At the tree farm, the saw is real.
Seasonal jobs are best because she tends to get bored after doing the same thing for too long. She used to work as an elf at the Santa meet and greet at the mall, but the bells on her shoes annoyed the hell out of her, and the screaming toddlers just made it worse. So, instead, she works at the tree farm, wears her flannel and beanie, assists small, young families with their trees, loads them onto the hayride so they can be taken up to the front, sometimes climbs on top of cars or into the beds of trucks to tie them down. She likes it.
Three is working with her this year, and they spend the whole day together, hoisting trees between the two of them and collecting saws, giving candy canes out to children. Sometimes, they disappear into the trees just to get away, and that’s the best part, especially if there’s snow on the ground. Three is Pearl’s oldest friend, the only person who stuck around after the Great Breakdown of Senior Year, and her father hates her, which just makes Pearl appreciate her more.
The farm is busiest toward the beginning of the season, so now, only a week before Christmas, the trees are picked through and the customers are sparse. Still, there are a few families who come through, trampling the snow under their boots. The children leave little trails as they bounce around, gazing at the trees with critical little eyes, trying to pick the best ones, and Pearl watches their parents nudge them toward the ideal ones—the full, tall ones with strong limbs. It reminds her of when she was tiny with her long, dark hair down to her lower back and her mother in her best coat, buttoned up to the throat, pixie cut hidden under an expensive hat that her father bought her so many Christmases ago. It was always just the two of them and the trees, Pearl—then Hime—reaching between the limbs to grab the trunk, and shaking with all of her little might, to check for weakness. She remembers her mother laughing every time, every year, always the same chiming sound, like the bells on Sunday morning, back when her father was convinced they needed to make appearances at church.
“Be careful, Hime,” her mother would order, but she always sounded amused, so Pearl never stopped. “The tree might fall on you.”
“It’s in the ground!” Pearl would always answer. “There’s roots!” And she would bend right there and scoop snow away, or dirt, and point.
They picked a tree that had strong roots, and, more importantly, strong limbs, “So you can climb it,” her mother would tease.
“I don’t think Papa would like that.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Her mother was (is) like that—all rebellion, all spunk, all love. And her father was exactly the kind of person who insisted his daughter call him Papa. Active correction, all image, with his beautiful blond hair and green eyes, he knew what he wanted from his family. And he got it, most the time.
Except when it came to Pearl.
“Hey,” Three mutters as they watch a family saw at the trunk of a small tree. It will only take one of them to carry it, but they’ll do it together anyway. “How’s your whole... thing?”
Pearl blows out a breath. “Which one?” There’re so many things right now, with the holidays coming. Thanksgiving was just the beginning of it. Christmas is looming over her, followed closely by New Year’s Eve and the extravagant party that she’s always expected to appear at.
“Your...” Three waves her hands in a large gesture, which Pearl can’t read at all. “Marina,” she finishes. “The thing with Marina.”
“Oh.” Pearl grins to herself and looks down at her boots. “It’s uh... The same. Y’know. We’re— We’re friends.”
“God,” Three groans, and crosses her arms. “You’re hopeless.”
“What? What? Hopeless? No! What the fu— heck are you talking about? We’re friends! That’s it!”
“That’s what I mean. You’re in love with her and—”
“Nooooo, no, no, no, no. Let’s not rush to the L word, all right?”
Three gives her a look that says that she can see right through her. Pearl shakes her head and waves her off. “We’ve only known each other for a few months. Can we please not rush it? Besides, she’s like... She’s not interested in me and—”
“As if,” Three laughs. “God, you’re the most useless lesbian I’ve ever met and that’s saying something! I have to see my own face in the mirror and now that... That’s a useless lesbian. But you? You’re worse.”
“Shut up.” Pearl crosses her arms and watches as the tree finally falls. The little girl lets out a small, playful yell as it goes. “C’mon, let’s go. Before Dad over there tries to pick it up and throws his back out or something.”
Three shakes her head but follows closely. Pearl greets the family and offers to carry the tree, which the mother accepts without pause, sending a look to her husband that speaks volumes. He backs off and focuses on their daughter, tows her up and places her, giggling, on his shoulders, so she can watch them carry the tree.
Together, Pearl and Three pick it up and start the short trek to the hayride. The boy sitting in the tractor is watching them and he waves at them as they approach. Pearl gives him a little nod and together they sling the tree onto the trailer. Then, they help the family up, instruct them to sit on the square bales, and watch them drive off.
“You’re like the trees, y’know,” Three says as they wave at the little girl. She waves back exuberantly.
Pearl sighs. “What?”
“You’re like... full of pine.”
A long pause. “Huh?”
“Pining! You’re pining! You’ve got it bad! And don’t give me that nonsense about her not being interested. You talk every day, Pearl.”
“She’s just being nice. I—”
Three groans. “Do you hear yourself? She’s just being nice. You’re impossible. If you talk so much, then why don’t you just ask her—”
Pearl shakes her head. “No. I... I can’t afford to lose her right now. She’s... She’s too special. She’s— She’s my best friend and—”
Three touches her hand, suddenly chagrined. “I get it. I’m just worried about you. You’ve been crushing on her since you met her. Hell, you called me at like one in the morning on Halloween because you were so freaked! I haven’t heard you that excited about anything in a long time. It made me excited. And now you’re... You’re calling her your best friend and you talk every day and you’re obsessed with each other.”
Pearl sighs and tugs her gloves off, one finger at a time, just to stall. “I know. I do like her. I like her so fucking much. She’s like... She’s so real and I—”
Three gives her a small, strained smile. “You’ve had a hell of a life, so I get it. Nothing feels real anymore, but trust me. She is. You deserve happiness, you know.”
Pearl stuffs her gloves into the back pocket of her jeans. “You keep telling me that.”
“I mean it! As your former best friend— No, it’s fine. Marina is special. I’m trying not to take it personally.”
Pearl snorts. “You’re my oldest friend.”
“Semantics. Listen, you deserve to be happy, okay? Your dad is a piece of work and he’s messed you up big time, but you deserve to be yourself. Just talk to her, all right? It doesn’t have to be now,” Three says quickly when Pearl opens her mouth to argue. “When do you see her again?”
“January.”
“Think about it until then, okay? Don’t fall into this trap. You’re better than this, you giant dumbass.”
Pearl sighs and crosses her arms. Three’s brow furrows and she throws an arm over Pearl’s shoulders and pulls her into a sideways hug. For a second, it helps.
That’s easier said than done, unfortunately. Pearl does have some kind of feelings for Marina, has since they spent that evening together in that diner. Marina has this vitality to her that Pearl is enamored with, that she can’t get enough of, from the way she laughs to the way she whispers softly into the receiver of her phone when it’s close to three in the morning and they don’t want to hang up. She can’t get enough of her, would spend every moment listening to her talk, or breathe, or mumbling about her homework, but how does she say that without coming on too strong? Without putting their blossoming friendship at risk?
Pearl likes Marina. And Marina likes Pearl—in a platonic way. She’s said it multiple times: Pearl is her best friend. And Pearl is content with that. She’ll take anything to be privy to Marina’s time, to her problems, to her joys. She’ll be the best fuckin’ best friend she can be, if that means that she gets to keep Marina in her life.
The truth is that her life doesn’t feel real in a lot of ways. Right now, she’s just coasting along, jumping from job to job, avoiding her parents while still trying to keep the relationship intact (for her mother’s sake), and playing with her band on the weekends. The only stability she has is her cat, the tiny asshole of a roommate that she loves to come home to and who has to be fed every day at six on the dot or else she’ll rebel and knock over anything that’s smaller than six inches and not bolted down. And she has Three, who’s as steadfast as a palm tree, bending and swaying with every single hurricane force wind that hits her, and never breaks.
And she has Marina.
And Marina is one of the only things that feels real.
And she’s all the way over there—states away—and their friendship is all digital, all text on a screen or sound beamed through the air. Yet, it’s the realest thing Pearl has right now, because there’s meat there. Marina listens and she thinks, and she gives herself in the ways she can. And Pearl does the same.
Pearl is trying to be herself. She dyes her hair and maintains her piercings and scowls as hard as she can when people look at her and her clothes are ripped and black and pink and she’s trying to become who she wants to be. But, sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, all she sees is the little girl she betrayed, the little girl who adored her parents and who promised her father she would try her best to be what he needed, to be a future that he could rely on.
She looks in the mirror now and sees those same brown eyes, lodged in a slightly larger skull, and she can imagine all that black hair, the same shade as her mother’s, and she sees the hard edge of her father in her nose, and she blinks hard and the little girl disappears and is replaced by the scowly, angry twenty-something. This is who she is now. She’s looking for happiness, like Three said, and she’s found it in her platinum blonde bob and her squinting eyes and her piercings.
At least, that’s what she tells herself.
“Pearl?” Marina’s voice mutters from her headphones. It’s after seven and Pearl is sitting in bed, staring up at the ceiling with the sated, sleepy cat in her lap. The cat is purring and licking at the inside of her arm, in the crook her elbow, and Pearl runs a slow hand down her black fur, drawing small patterns in the glossy surface.
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering...” She pauses for a long beat, and then speaks in a rush: “I’m making a new track, and I was wondering if I could use your voice on it?”
Pearl’s hand stalls and the cat, not expecting the weight, begins to squirm. “You want me to like... record something?”
“Uh...” Marina trails off, and Pearl begins her petting again, just to soothe the cat. “You can... I haven’t written lyrics or anything. I was just gonna sample your voice, but if you want to do like...”
She sounds chagrined, or embarrassed, and Pearl smiles. “You can do whatever you want, Reena. I’d fuckin’ love for you to use my voice. Your music is incredible.”
The cat finally has enough, and she rises, stretches, and lets out a small meow in Pearl’s direction, as if thanking her for the attention. That makes Marina chuckle to hear.
“Tell Lin hello for me.”
Pearl grins and talks to the cat as she moves down the bed and curls into a small ball. “You hear that? Marina says hi!”
Lin—full name: Linda from Accounting—blinks at her sleepily before setting her head primly on her paws and closing her heavy eyes.
“She went to sleep.” Pearl laughs and is rewarded with Marina’s chiming laugh in return.
“Good. She needs it, having to deal with you.”
“Hey!”
“Anyway, I actually... Okay, I already made a track. I sampled your voice from your band’s YouTube videos. I figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
Pearl sits up from her slight slump. “What? Marina, if you needed the vocal tracks, I coulda sent ‘em to you! That must’ve been hell—”
“It’s okay! It was a nice challenge! All I had to do was scrub out the instruments—no big! Plus, I wanted it to be a surprise!”
Pearl grins into the receiver and considers that, Marina leaning over her computer, scrubbing through to find suitable audio, cleaning up, maybe even doing that cool producer thing she does where she writes scripts to get her sequencer to do what she wants. She really is incredible. Pearl is so lucky to be her friend.
“I was gonna save it for Christmas, but what if you didn’t like it?” Marina continues in a rush, barely pausing. “That’d be a pretty crappy Christmas present. So... Do you want to hear it now?”
“Do I want to— Uh, yeah! Duh, of course I wanna hear it! Lay it on me!”
“Okay, I uh... I sent an email. If you want to listen to it now—like immediately listen to it now—I’m gonna... hang up... I, uh...”
Pearl can’t help it—she laughs. “Are you embarrassed? Marina, that’s so—” She cuts herself off and looks at her cat. She still has her eyes closed, but has one ear angled toward Pearl. She flicks it impatiently, as if telling her to just go through with it, just tell her you think she’s cute. Pearl swallows once and shakes her head. “Your music is killer, Marina. There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”
Marina mumbles something that Pearl doesn’t catch, but she doesn’t ask. It sounded pretty grumbly. “Yeah, you always say that, but it’s not gonna change how I feel. I mean, this is embarrassing, but I wanted to make something for you so...” She pauses again, then takes a deep breath, and Pearl hears her shift. “Okay! I’m gonna go now! Bye Pearl!”
Pearl laughs again and bids her farewell, if only because she really wants to listen to this song of hers. If she’s this wound up about it, it’s gotta be good.
After Marina hangs up, Pearl pulls out her most expensive headphones—because Marina is worth it—and settles back with her eyes closed.
After approximately two and a half listens, Pearl manages to pull herself out of the lovestruck, dumb stupor she’s lost in, and she grabs her phone to fire off the quickest text of her life.
me: marina...
Marina! <3: You listened to it already??? Jeeze, I thought you didn’t have your computer!
me: i have a phone, you know. haha
Marina! <3: I... I might have forgotten that in my panic.
Marina! <3: Listen, if you hated it, go easy on me okay? It was a first pass. I can make it better.
me: mar,,, what are you TALKIN’ abt?? it’s GREAT!! how the HELL did you make my voice sound like that?
Marina! <3: You’re just saying that because you’re my friend.
Marina! <3: And, I didn’t do anything really! You’re really skilled, Pearl. Your voice is incredible. You need to stop hiding it under all those drums and guitars.
me: haha whatever you say, reena.
me: ur biased as hell, admit it.
me: and i’m NOT just saying that!!! ur music is so good!!! u could post this online right now and you’ll get like 10000000000000 followers instantly.
me: that’s how good you are
Marina! <3: You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes. But... I’m glad you liked it. It’s... I wanted to make you something special, and I really do think your voice is incredible.
me: aww mar, ur so soft. i love that.
me: you can use my voice anytime, ok? ESPECIALLY because you make it sound so good!! you got a gift :P!
Marina! <3: :P!
Christmas isn’t framed with the traditional carols this year. Instead, Pearl plays one song on repeat. When she’s working in a far-off corner of the tree farm, when she’s grocery shopping, when she’s avoiding her father’s texts, when she’s playing video games, hell, when she’s chatting with Marina, it’s there under everything, playing softly just for her.
It really is an incredible song. Funky and jazzy and it makes her want to dance in slow, sweeping movements, all hips, all graceful sways, like she knows Marina does when she’s recording. And Pearl’s voice takes center stage, accentuated by Marina’s beautiful alto with harmonies that spin across the track. She took Pearl’s voice, stripped away the instruments and drums, and remixed it into something else entirely, using only the vowels and a few consonants for the actual sound. There are no words, but that’s the beauty of it; it doesn’t need language, is just the meeting of two voices through pure vowels and accentuated T’s, hard K’s, soft S’s. It worms its way into your brain and never lets go.
Pearl thinks that she could get used to this—Marina’s voice in her ear, them collaborating on things; what if they made music together? Like, found their own sound and created something together? That’d be...
Well, that’s a dream, isn’t it? File that one away with the dreams that are visiting her more and more frequently at night: the ones featuring Marina, flushed and saying things like “I like you too, Pearl... I... I have for a while.” She dreams a lot about Marina these days, and she prefers it that way. At least in dreams she can entertain her pining and her desperate desire to hold Marina close and to never let go.
“You’re pathetic,” Three says, about two days after Marina sent her the song, when she catches Pearl swaying to it as she sorts the saws in the tool shed. “You’re still listening to it?”
“It’s good,” Pearl whines back, in some meager attempt to save face. Three knows that it’s more than just good; she knows that Pearl can’t help it. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t listen nonstop if someone made you a song.”
Three sighs and takes a few of the saws. She places them on the racks slowly, careful to avoid the teeth. “Of course I would, but you’re grinning like a loon and serenading the tools. Have you thought about what we talked about? At least a little?”
Oh, she has. She’s laid awake thinking about it, thinking about how she’ll say it, how she’ll have to tell Marina the whole truth eventually, how she’ll have to lay everything out for Marina to see (hear) and to judge for herself, how she’ll probably have to listen to Marina suck in a breath and say something like, oh that’s so sweet Pearlie... But—
“No,” Pearl lies.
Three chuckles. “You’re catastrophizing, aren’t you?”
“Catastrophizing? Who? Me? I don’t even know that that word means. I can’t read.”
Pearl ignores the way Three sighs like a kindergarten teacher. She can’t ignore what she says though, because she’s trapped here in the tool shed with Three between her and the door, and no amount of playing dumb will get her through that door, not when Three is determined to grill her. “Uh huh,” Three says, and places another saw on the rack. “I seem to recall you eating up those poems in English class. And you broke down during The Great Gatsby of all things. You know what the word catastrophizing means.”
Pearl sticks her tongue out and shoves the rest of the saws onto one of the pegs. “Oh look, I’m done. I have to go—”
“Nope.” Three blocks the way, brandishing a saw, and Pearl blanches. “You’ve thought about it. What’s up? How are you spiraling now?”
Pearl crosses her arms, petulant, and feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. That’s probably Marina, free of her music theory class at last. In her ear, her own voice continues to sing to her, blending perfectly with Marina’s. “I haven’t been thinking about it.”
“You’re a bold-faced liar, Pearl Houzuki. What is it? You think she doesn’t like you back, right? I thought we went over this.”
Pearl’s phone vibrates again, and it takes all of her focus not to reach for it to check it. “No, I—” Three raises the saw. “Okay! Maybe! She’s just so incredible and I’m... not. She just... wrote a song and then produced it, featuring my voice! Who does that?”
Three sighs and slumps, exasperated. “Who does that...? You’re such a dumbass. She likes you! I might even be so bold to say that she like likes you.”
Pearl feels her stomach flip, because it’s one thing to be told that, over and over again, but suddenly she has this evidence, right there, in her ear, and Three is looking at her like Pearl’s the most desperate, sad, stupid creature she’s ever seen. “I—”
Her phone vibrates again, and it feels loud now. She can imagine Marina sitting on the bus, staring at her phone, waiting for Pearl to reply, and Pearl is trapped here, pinned in place by this slow-moving epiphany while Three is glaring at her because she’s so fucking stupid. She’s so dumb and in denial and she can’t control it, but Marina is so cool and funny and beautiful and she—
“She...” Pearl stutters. Her phone lets out a loud buzz again.
“She’s interested, Pearl. I haven’t even met her, but no one just makes a song like that for someone they just met a few months ago! And you really only know each other online... C’mon man.”
“Okay!” Pearl throws up her hands. “Maybe she is! That doesn’t change anything! I’m not gonna just stroll into her DMs and drop some giant, embarrassing truth bomb! What do you want from me! Let me pine!”
Three shoves the final saw onto the rack and sighs. “I know, but accepting it is the first step. You deserve to be happy. Let yourself—and let Marina. Clearly, she’s interested, which means she’d have something to gain from your happiness too.”
Pearl’s phone vibrates, and Three is looking at her with those big, brown eyes, and that’s it. Pearl buries her face in her hands and groans into her palms. “Fine! But I’m not saying a word until we’re together in person. This isn’t something you just tell someone over the phone. I mean, yeah, I know that some people do, but it doesn’t feel right for me... Or for us. I—”
Three steps forward and pulls one of Pearl’s hands away from her face. “It’s okay to be scared. Take all the time you need... But, for the love of god, please stop denying yourself this. Enjoy it. Flirt a little.”
Pearl smiles and nods once. She can... She can do that.
The night before Christmas, Pearl shows up at her parents’ house at midnight, Bose headphones lodged firmly over her ears, and she walks right past her father where he’s sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her.
“I thought you weren’t gonna show,” he says. Pearl can hear him, because she doesn’t have any music on, but she pretends she doesn’t.
“He’s pleasant,” Marina says, sarcastic, into her ear. They’ve been on the phone for hours, spending what little Christmas time they can together before Marina gets swept up into family events tomorrow. She flew to see her father a few days ago, and she’s been spending time with him, her stepmother, and Eight ever since, but she still carves out a few hours every day to sit on the phone with Pearl. It’s sweet, and it wakes the voice in Pearl’s head that sounds a lot like Three, the one that says See? Told you so...
“Yep,” Pearl whispers back, trying to hide her voice under the rustling sound of her movement. She doesn’t really want to talk to her dad right now.
“Your mother was worried,” he continues.
“I texted,” Pearl answers shortly. She drops the bag of presents next to the large, elaborately decorated tree in the middle of the sitting room and nimbly dodges around the new furniture sitting in silent sentry around it. In her headphones, Marina says something about emotionally distant fathers.
The house is dark so Pearl can’t see much else, but that suits her just fine. She finds her way through memory alone, traces her fingers along the banister and then the wall, and she makes her way to her childhood bedroom, where she falls onto the bed face first, not bothering with the light.
“I made it,” she says into the bedspread.
It was awkward getting here with that giant bag of presents and her overstuffed backpack, but she managed it. Even ignored her father’s text saying that he could send a car, and instead opted for a cab, which she was proud of. Unfortunately, the cab dropped her off at the gate, and she had to walk the full mile down the gravel driveway to get here. Every stone was perfectly round and white, and they all stood perfectly in line, not a single one rolled belligerently into the grass on either side of the road. Sometimes, Pearl feels a lot like those rocks.
The whole way, Marina rambled in her ear, trying to distract her, talking about the weather in Texas, how hot it was—seventy degrees in December—how exhausting her father was, how Eight was reconnecting with all her old friends and Marina wasn’t, but that was okay because she had Pearl. And Pearl answered in kind, explaining how she’d left this house and planned on never returning, how she came back every Christmas and New Year’s Eve as some sort of guilt-obligation, how she was somehow conned into coming back every Sunday, how her mother insisted they meet at a restaurant while her father was adamant that the family home was the only appropriate place to have Sunday lunch.
“I’m sorry,” Marina answers, and it’s just what Pearl needs to hear. Because Marina gets it. Marina gets what it means to go back to your family when you desperately don’t want to, when you feel like you’re being pulled apart, when you look in the mirror and only see the little girl you used to be looking back at you. Marina’s been going through it for days, has to hide who she is, tries to pretend, lies about dates that she’s been on because her father doesn’t know who she is, not really.
Pearl rolls over and stares into the darkness. This far outside of the city, there’s less lights outside, so her room is as dark as a cave. It comforts her, because she can’t be seen, because there’s nothing distracting her from the sound of Marina’s breathing from her headphones.
“Merry Christmas, Mar,” Pearl mutters, and reaches up to press the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I wish...” She trails off, considering. What she wants to say is sappy and sweet and not like her, but being back here makes her thoughtful and sentimental. She decides to just go for it. “I just wish we could be celebrating together... Instead of with our families.”
Marina is quiet for a long, hard moment. All Pearl can see is darkness, which just makes every sound louder, every moment of hesitation brighter, and she opens her mouth to take it back, to say I don’t know what came over me, but Marina clears her throat and Pearl realizes with a jolt that she’s probably crying, if the sound is anything to go on.
“Me too,” Marina whispers back.
Pearl curls into herself, wishing not for the first time that she could stretch her reach across all those states, all those miles, and give the hug she so desperately wants to give.