Dinner Time

The late teenage girl sat there, staring at the plate of stringed beans, mashed potatoes and serenaded T-bone steak still sizzling a little from the broiler pan hissing from the kitchen’s stovetop a few feet away.   

“Why are you staring at your food?” Her mother piped up, her wrist on the wooden table’s edge and poised to move so her fork would steal some lettuce leaves from her plate.

“Because, Mom, I don’t want it.” The daughter sounded more like she was just slipping that out to answer because she really had something else to say. Her father glared at her, she widened her eyes, and then stood from the table and pierced him with a glower. Then she rounded on her mother, sneering, “I don’t get why I can’t date a guy as my college sweetheart. I have to date him now! But I don’t want to because I don’t know him enough to date him.”

Her parents both sighed and the father cleared his throat. He returned to his meal, grumbling about the oldest child always rebelling against the adults of his or her life. Her mother resumed her position and stabbed another green leaf sadly.

“Please sit down, now.” Her father slid his eyes up at her and she looked at him but didn’t say or do anything. When she continued crunching away at her crouton and egg salad, the girl jabbed her finger at her plate and scowled, “I’m not doing this! I want to be myself instead of a family person. I want to stop doing tradition and all this tradition stuff.”

Her mother interjected, her face pinched with concern and fear, “Stop accepting tradition? What does that mean?”

She internally rolled her eyes and sighed, looking down and swallowing. She didn’t want to waste time explaining to her mother who didn’t get it that maybe if she would listen, she’d understand it too. So she hung her hat on the rack, as her father used to say, and walked away to her bedroom. Swinging the door closed, the girl sighed again and stared blankly at her tan and white wallpaper.

She was so sick of being told she had to follow generations of the stereotypical family that dated when necessary. Dated when needed, her father used to say. It didn’t really matter. The point was, she was different. Just because she belonged to this family didn’t mean she had to comply with such trivial matters. She wanted to slam her door but she knew this would cause her father to talk with her. She’d get upset and further his plans to get to know the guy through dating so she could really get to know him. Waiting until college would make him tire of her or frustrated with her or sick of being told ‘yes’ and then ‘no’ due to college life plans he would say. She didn’t agree with that. She wanted her own life. Not a life clung onto false hopes. Not a life not her own.

The girl shifted her eyes to the floor and let her brain just go through the dinner. Then, wishing she could just shake off all restrictions and rigidity towards dating, she walked to her desk, fell down into her chair and clicked on the tab labeled Facebook. Clacking away on her keyboard, the girl sat up straight and told her friend the details surrounding her father and mother’s dinner table conversation her father would’ve claimed as rude and angering. When he wrote back that he was sorry she felt she had to be a family tradition carrier, she jokingly snapped at him and then told him he needed to switch the subject.

Trident: Why can’t you just talk to your parents?

Pascal: BECAUSE! They don’t listen!

Trident: Why?

Pascal: *Rolls eyes* because they’re stubborn.

Trident: I don’t think they’re the only ones.

Pascal: …

Trident: Hah!

Pascal snorted and clicked the X staring at her on the upper right side of the chat box. She fell back against her chair. Then she, sitting back up, blinked and thought, Maybe … I shouldn’t be so stubborn after all. Pursing her lips, Pascal mentally groped for some hope. I just wish she would listen, and he would agree. She looked back at the place where the chat box existed. She reopened the box and continued typing to Trident.    

Pascal: Look, I’m sorry I clicked out.

Trident: Sorry. I hate that word.

P: Why?

T: Because it doesn’t mean anything.

P: Why?

T: *groans and rubs hand through hair*

P: What?

T: Think about it.

P: *sighs—

T: *admittingly*

P: That’s not even a word.

T: Yeah, it is. It’s my word.

P: Mm-hm.

T: Are we going to be real?

P: Sure.

T: I want laughter. Fun. Joy. I don’t really get that from you.

P: What do you mean?

A loud snap jerked Pascal from her Facebook world. She swung around and lunged for the sliding glass window. Opening it, she peered outside in the semi-darkness and yelled, “What are you talking about?”

“Come down here.”

Pascal half-rolled her eyes, climbed out of the window onto the roof and skidded herself down to the gutters. Staring down onto the sidewalk many, many feet down below her, Pascal gulped and started to sweat, telling Trident she couldn’t make it farther than where she was.

“Come on!” He encouraged, beckoning her. “Just…” His grey eyes averted over to a trashcan sitting beside a large minivan. “I can wheel that over to you and you can jump down onto it.”

“No!” Pascal panicked, gripping the planks of roof tiling. “I…I can’t jump down. I’ll hurt myself.”

“Come on.” He challenged. “What’s going to happen?”

“I’ll break a bone.” She threw out.

“We’ll take you to the hospital.” He laughed, bending over. “We’ll just patch you right up.”

“You’ll patch up your friend.”

“My girlfriend!” He teased.

“No!” Pascal just jerked her eyes all over the place, from the stone driveway to the two white garage doors. Then she called, “Could you open the garage doors and get the ladder?”

Trident let out a great sigh and trudged over to the little box. He punched four numbers and then waited as the right garage door squeaked and rumbled upwards. Scanning for the light, he nearly tripped on something. “Geez!” He growled and whipped his hand up. Light jolted on and Trident twirled around, grabbed the very ladder he ironically tripped over and then brought over to Pascal’s roof. He extended it a few feet and then leaned it so it banged against her gutter. She nodded, sweat making her hands even clammier. She slowly turned around and then slammed a bare foot onto the first ring.

“Come on!” Trident invited. Like it was that easy. She was ten, twenty feet in the air. Good thing it wasn’t raining.

“Just be quiet!” Pascal almost yelled. She focused on inching her way down and standing on ground. When Trident continued teasing her and then eventually shook the ladder, Pascal started screaming that she’d have his head should he keep that up.

“You’re so funny!” He guffawed and whizzed. As he did so, his foot jerked the ladder so that it went under Pascal’s gutter, and then there was a shriek probably causing the whole neighborhood to flick their lights on to figure out what was going on. “Trident!” She screeched and then landed on the sidewalk below after abandoning the ladder and plummeting to the earth below. Pascal threw a finger right at a taunting Trident, smacking every step towards him and widening her blazing eyes. She balled her fists and hissed, “Do that again, Tri, and we won’t be friends!”

“Uh-huh.” His half-closed eyes and tightly crossed arms displayed themselves shortly after this comment.

Pascal rolled her eyes and huffed, “Why you need to basically kill me—”

“You’re standing right in front of me.”

“Stop it, Tri!” Pascal whipped around and walked right from the sidewalk to the front door. Then she made her legs move as if they were jelly. She halted and turned, the front porch lights glowing behind her.

“Trident.” She faced him. “Why do I need to be scared of heights?”

“Not ‘need to.’ Believe you have to be.”

“What?” She almost spat.

“Come on, Pas. Just think about it.”

Pascal let herself do so. She was tempted to roll her eyes and stomp away into the house, but she didn’t want Trident to leave. Or think she couldn’t or wouldn’t be friends anymore. So she sighed and nodded her almond brown head and looked up at the sky. Stars twinkled and sparkled, but Pascal returned to Trident. He coughed, but she knew he was waiting for an answer. Now. She sighed, almost scratching a toe into the white concrete front porch floor. “I am scared of heights.” She burst out, pulling a stream of hair behind her ear.

“What don’t I know?” He required.

“That…I used to have a cat named Jimmy.” Pascal laughed, but the still air confused her.

“Trident?” She called out, but he didn’t respond. She tried again, but Trident shut his mouth for some reason. “Trident?” She moved so she could possibly get a better glimpse of him in the dark, but she didn’t even see the faintest silhouette. “Trident!” She now called, her voice rising from the fear cozying up in her mouth.

A window slam was heard, and Pascal dashed forward onto the grass and jerked her head around. She gaped and squinted as his T-shirt’s logo design boasted itself. She stepped back to ensure that circle and semicircle actually belonged to a white T-shirt all wrinkled and untucked. Yep, it did, because he turned around and jerked a finger towards her desk. She shook her head and stretched her neck, squinting even more. He jerked a nod like she had whispered or mouthed words to him. She whipped her head back and forth and gestured for him to—

Never mind. He never listened. She just scurried towards the fallen ladder, fixed it, climbed it and scrambled from her roof to her window. He let her in and she hissed, “What are you doing in my room?”

“I was going to leave you a message.” He admitted, sauntering over to the chair and plopping down. Swinging around, Trident began clacking away regardless of the fact that her parents were sleeping—Pascal mentioned her father’s snores—and brushed his hands off the computer.

“Hey!” He said, making Pascal hush him. He complied, though, standing up and moving around so he stood in front of her, looking down a little at Pascal. She brushed a hair from her lips and raised her eyebrows. “Yes?” She slapped a tanned hand on a straightened elbow.  

“I just want to say that I think you’re a little too overprotective of yourself. I think you need to branch out if you want to be different from your family. They may tell you we have to date now, but I just would like if we could just be ourselves. We need to breathe in a relationship if we ever marry, and we need to make sure we actually can not only marry but also be a couple. Even now.”

Pascal stared at his little company name on the right side of his shirt under his right collarbone. She sighed as she thought and then looked at Trident. His face was blank and then he wore a strained smile. She was about to punch him in the stomach for saying, she told him, marry until a squeak froze them both.

“What do we do?” Trident hissed.   

“I don’t know!”

Both of them heard the squeak again and then all felt quiet. Snores arose again and their fears melted away. When Trident had told Pascal something about her reluctance to comply with people, she nodded and watched him almost become a shadow as he went from the window to the roof to the ground—somehow. Maybe he slid down the ladder. He was so quiet Pascal wouldn’t hear him breathe right next to her. And he was also right—besides the marriage thing. Pascal smiled wide and looked at the darkened window. After changing into her pajamas, Pascal shut the lights and computer off and then rolled into bed, sleeping only to wake up to the first day of school. The first day was only the beginning of a whole last pre-college year of Trident’s antics.

But at least he helped her.

Pascal sighed, grateful.  

Tomorrow’s another day, she sighed herself to sleep. I’ll punch him in the arm tomorrow.

Tomorrow didn’t agree with Pascal at all. Almost dragging her feet towards two white pillars in between a brick overhead archway and a yawning brick sidewalk, Pascal looked numbly up at her school’s title. Beachy Towels High School stood high above her head. If the letters could talk, they’d boast. But they didn’t. Pascal sighed again as she trudged through the rest of the day, lugging schoolbooks two pounds too heavy and two hundred pages too much. As she finally threw herself down onto her school bus seat, Pascal looked outside. She moved her head back to get a better view of the foggy window. Poking it, Pascal scooted up next to it and grinned. Maybe Trident will help me with this message. She wrote You really mean what you said? Could you explain it?

Something made her turn. She twisted around and widened her smile as Trident squeaked back. When they were done writing on the windows, Trident and Pascal each pulled out their cell phones and texted each other about last night.

Can we talk on the roof tonight?

Something wrong?

I hate school.

But that’s not why you’re upset.

*S—* Okay.

What’s with the S—?

I was about to sigh, but… She looked back and winked. “I’m not going to.” She grinned and flipped around.

Wow!!

Well, it’s the answer to what you said. At least a little bit.

Oh. I thought you totes changed.

Totes? Pascal laughed and gestured for Trident to move up. He did after asking the bus driver if it was okay, and plopped down next to someone getting up to move to the back. She showed him a GIF she thought was funny, and he chortled. Soon, they were shaking, unable to pick themselves up from bending over and slipping their hands over their mouths. Wiping her eyes, Pascal shook her head and looked up at Trident. He was looking at her, and she put her head on his shoulder and grinned. He smiled back.

“Totes.” He repeated, making her giggle.

“What does that mean?”

He shook her off and texted her. She nodded at Tell you tonight.

“So… I just…my family doesn’t want me just being friends with you.” Pascal returned to looking right up at Trident, which made her tilt her head back a little as she was sitting on her bottom and her hands were behind her. She uncrossed her legs.   

“Oh…” He made a face. “That’s weird. Don’t think I’m intrusive, but I just thought your father wouldn’t want you dating!” Then he howled.

She chuckled. “Yeah! It seems backwards. But they want me seeing whether the guy will propose by college because…that’s always the way it’s been.”

“Oh.”

“I—”  

“Hey.”

Both of them whirled around and stared at Pascal’s mother who had her shoulders and chest outside the window and dirty blond hair all tightened up in pink curlers. “Trident, your dad wants you home. He told me you have some work to do.”

“Like?” Pascal asked.

“Stuff.” Trident intoned, and Pascal smiled. She wiggled her eyebrows, and he shook his head. “You’re not knowing.” He clambered down the roof and then leapt from it. A smack onto the driveway and then a “I’m okay!” caused a huge sigh from Pascal’s mother and an admonition to never do that again. But Trident just waltzed away, whistling.

“Hey!” Pascal hurried down the roof and twisted her body so her Converse sneakers dangled from the roof. Letting herself go, Pascal alerted her mother she was fine and then dashed towards Trident. “Let’s walk home.” When she looked back, her father had replaced her mother, and he was shaking his head as he wondered aloud about them not holding hands. Pascal shrugged and kept her attention on Trident, who swung an arm around her and thanked her for the company. They walked across the driveway and stepped onto an island of grass and then headed straight towards two houses lit with front lights.

“As long as you don’t sigh back home.”

“I won’t.”

“How do I know?”

“Because.” When they got to his house, they hugged and said good-night. Then Pascal scraped her feet as she waltzed back home, hands in pockets. When she changed into pajamas, Pascal listened to the distant sound of pounding. She smiled excitedly to herself, making a mental note to tell her parents she was going to help Trident this weekend. She was going to tell them she was in charge of her life. Not the legacy of no legacies.

When Pascal messaged him, he replied that he did enjoy just being friends with her. She was about to reply when she heard her father telling her mother Pascal, he thought, didn’t understand family tradition. But that, he sighed, was something she was going to put up with. Not him.  

Pascal smiled to herself. She knew what she was doing. He did know. And she had just proven it to him.

The next morning, Pascal sat at the table all ready to tell her parents she was going to ask Trident if she could help him that weekend. Her father said if he wants you to, but her mother just shook her head.