7DSJ: Downtempo

by Shinzakura

March 25, PM: Season's Trees

I wake up in the late morning, and I already know I’m not going to hear the end of it. From all the times I’ve been here, Mom has been a big believer in people eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like clockwork, and I woke up way too late for breakfast and at least a couple of hours for lunch.

As I’m getting up, there’s a knock on the door, and before I can even respond, my mother comes in. I guess she really doesn’t particularly care much about my sisters’ privacy, not that I should be particularly surprised. Once again, she finds a way to prove my point that while I love my her, she doesn’t make it easy to like her.

“Pinkamena, are you going to sleep in all day?” she asks me.

“No, I’m up,” I tell her. “It should be rather obvious.”

“Good – I don’t want you to start picking up your uncle’s unsavory habits.” I restrain myself from wanting to chew her out right then and there. Uncle Carrot deserves to sleep in, especially given he’s always the first one up back at home! Always watching the twins, making sure I’m ready for the day…. He’s a freakin’ saint, and you have the temerity to complain because he gets to sleep in once in a while?

“Get dressed – and get dressed properly. You’re coming with me downtown to meet some friends of mine and I want you dressed like a proper lady. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.” Apparently I don’t have a choice; I’m sure that if I asked my aunt, she’d tell me to do it just to spend some bonding time with my mother. And in the abstract I would agree. It’s just that there’s a reason why hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid don’t exactly go well together.

Still, we are here so I can see my parents. And I did get to spend a decent amount of time with my father yesterday. Who knows? Maybe by spending some quality time with my maternal unit, we can finally start bonding!

What the hell was I thinking?

I’m now here in the Sunrise Symphony Diner in wonderful Rockton (a suburb of Bentonville just to the east; technically the farm’s address is in Rockton), where my mother is meeting with her weekly Bible study group. They’re all a bunch of women who got far older than they actually are, self-judgmental and critical of anything that isn’t within their narrow purview. And the sad thing is? My mother is one of the more progressive people here! At least she didn’t whisper “whore” as I went to go sit down.

And “whore”? Seriously? Yeah, I know, I know – I get down on myself a little sometimes, a little self-Pinkie flagellation. But my friends would never consider me that, and I know Sunny would absolutely never! And it’s not like I’m dressed risqué; I’m wearing a yellow sundress Rarity made for me just for the trip. And I don’t even like dresses. Skirts, sure, wear them often, but I prefer jeans. But I guess I had to put up a show for Mom’s sake and what do I get?

“Whore.”

Yeah, thanks for widening the generation gap, you Boomer bitch.

Sometimes I start to see why Derpy tends to hide her feelings behind that über-snarky exterior of hers.

So at the moment, I’m seated at the kids’ table (Yeah. “Kids”. At my age.) while the “adults” are talking about whatever it is they’re talking about that I’m busy ignoring – could be Matthew 7:5 (that’s the one about being a hypocrite), macramé, or taking over the world through coup de etats and custard pies. Don’t really know, don’t really care. The majority of those of us at the kids’ table are actual children, and like children anywhere, they’re bored out of their gourds and their parents are too self-absorbed in their own interests to pay attention to their children. I swear, if I ever have kids, I’m going to make sure they understand how much love they’re gonna get, Pinkie-style!

But there’s one girl my age, a girl with fair skin, deep blue eyes, and gray hair with black and yellow highlights. She’s introduced herself as Jolly. She seems decent enough, and during the coffee break, when everyone stops what they’re doing – or not doing – and goes to get refreshments, she steps outside the diner and asks me to come with her.

“You don’t seem like a local girl,” she tells me. “Saw you come in with Mrs. Quartz. Visiting your aunt?”

“Other way around, actually,” I explain. “I live with my aunt and uncle in Canterlot. I’m in town to visit my parents.”

Not surprisingly, her eyes light up in that way I was talking about with Hope yesterday. “You’re from California? That’s so cool!”

After I try to explain that no, that didn’t mean LA or San Fran, we finally get to talk. Jolly has lived here her whole life and apparently, Maud babysat for her a few times, so she has that in common with me. She attends Rockton High, and is a part of the book club. In a sense, she’s a country Twily with far less friends and decidedly (as far as I know) missing one incredibly hot sister.

Well, she’s also got a nutjob for a mother as well, so…even odds, I guess?

She looks around at this place, then asks, me, “So…what do you think about all this?”

“I…I try not to,” I admit, wondering if I’m about to offend a new friend. Usually pissing off people she just met is Rainbow’s job.

“It’s okay,” she said to me with a smile, trying to put me at ease, I guess. “I’m not as much into this hardcore stuff, either. Granted, I do believe in God and Christ and all, that, but…this is a bit too much for me. I know my mother’s into it, but me? I’m more about the loving people than the judging them…at least for the most part.”

“The most part?”

“Yeah, you know, the usual parts of life and all the teenage stupidity that comes with it?” She gives me a weak smile. “I…tend to get picked on at school a lot because I’m into working on cars and engineering and such. There’s this one girl, especially, that pushes all my buttons. She keeps aggressively trying to get in my pants, and I do mean aggressively! Based on how she acts half the time I’m afraid that hitting on me might turn into just hitting me if I keep turning her down!”

I want to be surprised at that, but I’m not. High school is a cruel world filled with some of the sweetest and kindest people you know…as well as the worst kinds of monsters. And I wish I didn’t know that from experience.

We talk for a little while longer, and I get the sense this girl is as damaged as I am, though in a different way. A kindred spirit, who, if she was in Canterlot, I could see going to those weekly meetings for the Club’s victims…a meeting that I know I should be the star attraction in, but one I can never be a part of. My confessions are for those who know the truth about it all, and the pain that they can handle, a pain that sometimes I’m not sure that I can entirely handle anymore.

Jolly and I trade phone numbers and I invite her over to the farm. Maybe if I talk to her in a better setting, I can help. I’ve been there, maybe in a worse way, and while I’m sure her situation’s a relative cakewalk compared to mine, she probably feels the pain just as keenly, and no one deserves to have their world turned upside down by anyone at all. Besides, she sounds like she could use a friend, and even if I’m just here for a while, I can be that friend.

What was it Twi says? Friendship is magic?

Yeah, let’s go with that.

I get back to my parents’ place and really, there’s not much to do here, except for read – and I have a funny feeling I’m going to run out of reading material real quick – and maybe some other stuff. If I were the kind of person Sunny used to be, I’d go through my sister’s stuff, but that would be a personal violation. After all, I’m hiding stuff from my family; my siblings deserve to have their own secrets, even if my mother would disagree.

Almost makes me wonder if she does go through their stuff when they’re not here. Also creeps me out to the point that I’m glad I brought a backpack, because I’ll be keeping all my private stuff with me just to be on the safe side, not that I brought anything too personal, anyway. I’d hate to see what she’d think of my diary. Maybe that’s a sign I should stop keeping one.

Anyway, as we’re pulling into the driveway, I see Dad and Uncle Carrot packing fishing gear into his car. Didn’t know either of them fished, but maybe it’s just a way for them to get out of the house, not that I blame them. Even if you include Pound, the double-Xs outnumber the XYs, and I’m sure boys will be boys and all that. Besides, Uncle Carrot has more than earned this and it’ll be good for them to get out of the house for a while, if only so they can avoid the argument sessions between Mom and Auntie Cup. Personally, I’d be tempted to go along with (even though fishing kinda squicks me out), just to avoid it as well, but hey, they probably need bonding time.

So as I head up to the room I can already hear the first round of bickering between my aunt and my mother. Not wanting to deal with it, I decide to keep going and hope my day improves, like maybe a text from Rarity or a picture from Sunny. Hell, at this point I’d even take an eye that floats, silent and unblinking, in my kitchen back in Canterlot. I mean, my life can’t get any stranger than it already is, right? Friend of an alien princess…

…wondering about where I stand with another…

…yeah, so there’s that. Something that I’ve known for the longest time: Sunset, one of my best friends in the world, is probably a princess, just like Princess Twilight. Worse, she’s in exile for arguing with her mother – Princess Celestia. It’s funny, even before she told us about that, I already knew, somehow. After all, for the longest time, the only one she would really listen to was our school principal, and I noted that whenever I saw Sunny in unguarded moments around Ms. Celestia, there was a certain…longing? Absence? Saudade? The point being that I knew it had to be something more than the mere “Sunny needs to have an adult whack her upside the head”, and something far more familiar to her – familial to her.

Besides, it was part of what got her to change her ways, so I’m glad, because her change saved more than just herself. She saved me, too, and for that, I’m forever grateful in ways I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express. Besides, she proves that there’s still hope for a person like me, that proves that even someone as damaged and forlorn as me can still have someone like Sunny to care for me.

After all…doesn’t the old myth say that only virgins can associate with unicorns?

And yet she’s still around. Makes me smile.

It’s halfway through watching my second movie on the laptop that my phone rings, with a particular ringtone that I set for one specific person.

“But don’t call it love –
Call it a longing,
Call it a yearning,
Don’t call it love…
Call it a sweet dream

“Shh don’t say nothing…”

Hey, it’s my favorite song by Zero 7, and besides, I have ringtones for all my friends – about a gig on my SD card is just for that! Plus, really, it was that or something by Blue Six, but couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head.

Without even looking at it I pick up the phone and answer. “Sunny!” I can’t help but chirp.

“Oh, heya, Pinkie. How goes?” I hear that sweet voice and I just want to cuddle up with it. But moreso with its owner. “Just another day in La-la-land on my end. Looking at the same museum over and over gets kinda dull after a while. What about you?”

I miss you, I want to tell her, and I’m not sure why. It’s not as though I’ll never see her again. But those are the words that want to tumble out of my mouth. Sure, I do miss her – I miss all my friends, and I even said as much about ten minutes ago when I sent a quick text off to AJ, who’s also visiting her family farm and if I could get away with it, I’d make the two-hour drive south to go see her, but as it is my parents would never give me that kind of permission and to be honest, even Uncle Carrot and Auntie Cup would balk a little at that.

So I tell her an edited version of hanging around with Hope last night as well as meeting Jolly earlier today, the issues with my mother and how I got to hang around a bit and bond with Dad yesterday, the fact that Mom is being, well, Mom and the usual kind of stuff. What I don’t tell her is the other things going through my mind right now because I’m not sure I’m completely certain of what they are or even if I want them there. Deep down inside I know what the answer is even though my brain is telling me something entirely different.

“Pinkie? You there?”

“Oh, sorry, Sunny!” I blurt, laughing nervously. I didn’t space out, really! “I was just thinking of something.”

“So, we’re going to the Golden Apple tomorrow. It’s supposed to be the best comic book store in the world. Need me to pick you up anything?”

I want to remind her that it’s Rainbow who reads comics and both her and Flutters who read manga. Strangely enough, I’ve never really gotten into them, being more of a videogame kind of girl. “Isn’t there an import store across the street from there? I remember there being one when we went a few years back.”

“I don’t know. I can ask Tavi or maybe Midge; Midge might know since she’s a local. But did you want me to pick you up anything in particular?”

“I’ll have to think about it.” I pull my finger out of my hair; I was twirling my hair around it and I know I’ve only done that when it came to two other people and I’d rather not think about them right now. Or ever, for that matter.

“Well, I hate to end this call so soon, but my battery’s about to die. I can call you tomorrow if you want.”

You have no idea how much I want you to. “If you have time, otherwise just text me if the store’s there.”

“Okay, will do.” I hear a pause and knowing her, she knows something’s up. “Pinkie, is everything okay?”

I want to…. I block out the thought, lest it slip to my lips. “Everything’s fine,” I lie, and I hate myself for doing so. “Just…tired. Tired of arguing with my mother all the time.”

“I…kinda know how that is,” she tells me, and I have to wonder once again about what brought her here, what drove her away from the life she led in another reality to choose this misbegotten hell we humans call life?

And I’m supposed to be the cheerful one amongst my friends. Sometimes I wonder if they’d still think the same thing if they ever saw my train of thought.

I reluctantly end my call with Sunny and wonder if I should talk to any of my other friends, as opposed to going downstairs and deal with my mother and my aunt probably bickering as usual. Suddenly trying to talk them into letting me drive down to Heavener doesn’t sound like such a bad idea after all. I mean, AJ visiting her family can’t be any worse than my situation, right?

It’s about then that I hear a rapping sound against my window. I open the curtains to see Hope standing there, leaning on a ladder. I can probably guess where she got it from. The moment I open the pane, she says, “C’mon! Took my Mom’s car, so let’s go somewhere!”

The way she says that makes me wonder. “Did you get permission?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Fuck no! That bitch is so tied up in her writing she wouldn’t notice if I had an orgy right in front of her desk! Now you coming, or what?”

Every instinct of mine is telling me this is a bad idea. That she’s going to get in trouble for taking her mother’s car, and I’m going to get in trouble for going along with the ride. I could tell my family that I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t lie to them – I know I really couldn’t, at least not to Uncle Carrot and Auntie Cup.

I pause only to grab my backpack before I head out the window. I’ll have to think of something to tell everyone later. Maybe making a friend here will cover that…even if I know my mother doesn’t like Hope.

Then again, I’m not sure she likes anyone.

Well, I’ll say this much: Mrs. Amore’s Lexus is a hella nice SUV. And I didn’t know there was a drive-in here, but there is: the Rock Ridge Drive-In, where you can watch two movies for only $10 a car. Hope and I stopped off and picked up some stuff from Walmart before heading here and choosing the films. Didn’t really care what was showing, just wanted to get out of the house.

Between movies I check my cellphone. Sure enough, there’s eight texts and two calls from my mother demanding to know where the hell I am, as well as one single text from Auntie Cup wanting to know if I’m okay. I respond to hers, letting her know where I am and to let Mom know not to worry, as if that’s going to make a bit of difference.

As I slide my phone back in my backpack, Hope just looks at me, rolling her eyes. “Daddy’s girl always has to keep in touch with home?”

“My aunt, actually. I’ve lived with them my whole life, and arguably they’re probably my parents more than my actual parents are, if that makes sense,” I tell her.

“Hey, just fucking with you, okay? Wish either of my parents gave a fuck about me like that. Well, my old man does, but my mom? Well…I’ve told you more than enough about that.”

I give her a wistful smile. “I’m sure your mom loves you.”

“I doubt it. After all, I like me the pink taco, and that really ruins whatever ‘boy fucks me’ fantasies she cooks up for her novels.” Hope looks really agitated. I wish I could do something, but I’m not sure it’s my place. “You don’t know what I’d do right now to be with Tira. And it wasn’t just the sex, though that was fun. It was being with someone I loved and who I knew loved me. We were more than just best friends, Pinkie. We were two hearts, beating as one. We’re like the season’s trees, blooming brightly in a springtime love before the winter of sorrow tears us away.”

I think that’s probably the most eloquent thing I’ve ever heard her say. And I know how it is about being more than just best friends. Or maybe I don’t. I’m not completely sure.

I feel her hand on mine, see her eyes as she looks into mine. “You know what I mean, Pinkie?”

It bothers me that I do.

Author's Note:

In case you're curious what song is on Pinkie's ringtone for Sunset:

/michaelgraye/dont-call-it-love-12-version