(Trin)
If Hell had a training center, it would be high school. I don’t understand people that claim those are the best years of one’s life. I suspected that they were losers, who didn’t fulfill their dreams or never did anything with their lives. All high school for me was a continuing string of morons, like my whole school career until college.
I knew that the world was not made up of complete and utter imbeciles; I had seen enough of it traveling extensively thanks to Shin’s parents. They were always people of the world, so I wondered why more intelligent people were not occupying the town or just why I had not met them. It was painful in a way to have to deal with fools most of the time.
The worst thing about high school was that almost everyone that hated me from first grade on was still there; some people had graduated and gone off to college thankfully. I loathed one pair in particular and that was Connie and Lonnie; the Rockwaller bitches. I’d call them whores, but that would be insulting to whores, who at least serve some sort of purpose, unlike those two wenches.
The snake sisters had been in my ass since I started school; it was feasible that a Rockwaller just had to be a throne in Possible’s side considering the thing going on with Bonnie and Kim. I had kicked their asses several times quite literally. I never had any shame in beating up on people that didn’t know how to fight; I have no clue where Kim picked up that silly notion. They should have learned to stop having their mouths write checks that their asses couldn’t cash. They should have learned their lesson the first time and stopped coming at me, but they kept coming back for more.
Shin once suggested that the Rockwaller sisters were attracted to me and they liked it when I made them crawl. He always did have quite the imagination on him. And even if it were right, they repulsed me too much for me to even consider them human, let alone be attracted to either of them.
Aside from old problems, I had a new problem that was a shouting jackass named Steve Barkin. Calling him a douche bag might seem a bit much and I have always tried to not use such coarse language, but he was a douche bag; plain and simple. The first day of school, he tried to get in my face for almost being late to class. Almost, as in I wasn’t even late yet.
I did end up being late as I had to stand there and tell him off in my own special way. I cursed him without using a single cuss word for over a minute. It was fun, for me anyway; I doubt that he saw it that way. The look on his face said it was something appalling and perhaps a bit confusing to him. I was going through a bit of a poetic phase when it came to insulting people that irked me; I could see where he might have been a little confused with me using too many metaphors.
I could guess that Mr. Barkin hadn’t been warned about me and Shin. He saw me and I suppose thought “she’s little and blonde, so she must be weak.” No, that was a very bad assumption. I might have been a bookworm, but I also had teeth and claws to go along with that book.
I believe that Mr. Barkin attempted to get on Shin the second that he saw him too. Shin had come to school dressed in a kimono; he was still in a festival mindset because we had just gone to Japan over the summer and all we did was hunt for festivals. Mr. Barkin got on Shin about being dressed like a woman; apparently, in his head, only a woman could wear a kimono. I will always be thankful to not be in his head.
Mr. Barkin was the first person in Middleton that we had come across to realize that Chinese people weren’t the only Asians on the planet. Unfortunately, he seemed to be stuck on believing that Shin was Korean. Why Shin would be Korean and in a kimono was beyond the both of us; once again, I will always be thankful to not be that man’s head.
(Shin)
Through out my life I had always been every type of Asian as long as it wasn’t Japanese. I’d like to think that the name Shinichi Toriyama screamed Japanese to the heavens and back, but maybe I’m wrong. I wouldn’t even mind if they thought I was completely Japanese, if only they got the Japanese part because I knew that no one was going to guess half Japanese, a quarter Black and a quarter White. But, it was like people didn’t know the nation of Japan existed or something.
Anyway, I did come to school in a kimono. I had like ten of them and I felt like it was a shame to just wear them for festivals or special occasions; I didn’t even have too many special occasions to wear them to since my father’s family didn’t accept me. I liked my kimonos and I also liked trying to get Trin to wear hers with me. Sometimes it worked, but that day it was just me. Later on down the line, she would join me every so often and wear one of her many pink kimonos to school.
First, Mr. Barkin wanted me to go home and change when he saw me. He looked at it as the equivalent of me showing up at school in a dress, which I would’ve done if I was that adventurous, but even I never cross-dressed. I had to lecture him like the idiot that he was as to why it was appropriate for me to wear a kimono. Little did I know that the harpy had just chewed him up and spit him out, making him even more hardheaded than he really was. So, I had to be a little harder than usual with the guy and he still wasn’t really paying me all the mind that I would’ve liked, until I actually threatened to bend him over to prove a man could wear a kimono. He was rightfully confused by my declaration; hell, even I didn’t know really where I was going with that one.
But, from then on, my goal was to perplex him with sort of gay banter. Most of the things I said didn’t make any sense, but it was worth it to see the confused look in his eyes. I once told him only a real man could go deep throat and then I told him that he proved that; he hated me to say the least.
I’d like to say that Mr. Barkin hated me more than Trin, but I can’t be certain. I can say that he hated when we were together, which was almost all of the time. It was like tag team on him when both of us happened to cross his path. She’d say something, then I’d chime in, and then back to her. He never knew what hit him when it was the both of us, so after a while, he stopped bothering with us.
For a while, I truly think that he was scared of Trin. The bitch had teeth; that tongue in her head was an effective carving tool for a creative and abusive mind dominated by demons. I had the whole gay thing that scared him off, but she had something that was frightening, like a homicidal manic was frightening. So, he eased off of us until Trin kicked some dude’s ass for grabbing her ass; I had always noticed that her ass seemed to scream “grab me.” There must be some magnetic force in her ass for hands because, hell, even I had been tempted to cup her ass, if only to see the appeal.
Anyway, Mr. Barkin decided to go at Trin for being molested in my opinion; no, not just my opinion, in reality. Okay, she was molested. That kid had no right to grab her ass or anything else on her body.
Mr. Barkin claimed that he was going at her for beating a kid up; I believe the injured young man was on the football team and he probably had it in his big head that he could do whatever he wanted to anyone. Trin straightened that kid out and then all but bit Mr. Barkin’s head clean off his shoulders for having the balls to come at her because she was sexual harassed.
Our parents actually came up to the school because of that incident after they heard us joking about it. Barkin had, of course, been annoyed by their arrival and he did not know how to deal with them. He tried to argue how Trin had possibly ruined the kid’s football career, but they didn’t want to hear any of that; all she had done was broke the nutty kid’s nose anyway. It wasn’t as serious as he was trying to make it out on that kid’s end. He was such a bastard.
(Trin)
Aside for dealing with overall stupid people, we took mostly advanced classes through out our high school careers. High school wasn’t that bad as far as education went. Our teachers were mostly pussies, though; as you can imagine, I held great animosity toward them to continue to use such harsh language.
Every now and then, we did get a teacher that didn’t know who we were; those teachers typically came from out of town. They were also generally cool and we could talk to them because they respected us, either our minds or abilities or desires to actually do our best academically. I believe it would be appropriate to give them credit in helping calm us down.
For a while, I will admit that Shin and I were out of control. Not so much to where our parents were worried about us, but enough to where we were taking the smallest things to heart and the tiniest things set us off. The foolish thing was that we weren’t taking into account that we could screw around and kill someone, someone who probably didn’t deserve to die. While Shin and I might fake it very well that we’d kill people, it never was on our “to do” list, especially if it was some little high school student.
The couple of teachers that we had that were cool, they frankly told us that we were better than the way that we acted. We had heard the speech before, but the difference was that those teachers didn’t put it in a condescending way that we were accustomed to. They pointed out that life was about learning and growing and just because we were ahead of our class didn’t mean that they could catch up to us one day if we only gave them a chance. They pointed out that every now and then people weren’t always looking to offend us; they were just uninformed or something similar to that. It took us a while, but we did consider that they may have a point.
Shin and I did think that perhaps if we always thought the worst of people that made us no better than they were. They typically assumed the worst of us, which was always close-minded. We would be close-minded too if we kept assuming that everyone was horrible or stupid in some manner. So, eventually, we got to believing in giving folks a chance, in our own ways anyway. To do that, Shin had the brilliant notion that we should join some teams; he also pointed out that it would look great on our college applications.
Shin wanted to go through all of the teams and clubs in the school, even though we didn’t plan on joining anything that involved large groups of people; I also wasn’t looking to be involved in anything that had people touching me. I was against all forms of touching, especially if the person doing the touching didn’t have the last name Possible or Toriyama. Shin was really just bored, I soon learned.
My evil twin was only looking to make people uncomfortable rather than really joining most teams or clubs. He was already known to be a homosexual and most high school jocks weren’t looking to be on a team with him; he had quite a bit of fun messing with the football team when he tried out. I, on the other hand, entertained myself by pointing out all of the in-the-closet homosexuals. It made everyone nervous and I was rather accurate when it came to both males and females; Shin was the one that confirmed the males. He always was into exploring other people’s sexuality.
Watching Shin during the tryouts was enjoyable because no boy wanted to get near him. Some boys even ran when he got close to them, especially during the basketball tryouts. They just didn’t want him bending behind them to play defense.
We did our best at tennis, swimming, and track because they didn’t involve touching other people or really interacting with other people. I had refused to tryout for any sport that had touching in it, much to Shin’s annoyance. I knew that most of the teams didn’t really want me anyway much like most teams didn’t want Shin, but they didn’t want us for different reason; I wasn’t out like he was after all.
We joined the chess club; Uncle Shin had taught us the game well. The club kicked us out rather quickly because Shin kept yelling “king me” while making moves; not to mention he was beating everyone soundly while acting like an idiot. We used to show up after they booted us just because we wanted to be irksome. We wanted them to understand that we’d leave only when we wanted to and not a moment before. We couldn’t be kicked out of any place.
(Shin)
Technically nothing too overwhelming happened to us in high school as far as either of us was concerned. It was all the same thing with new people involved as well as old people. The best thing that we did was to get into computers. We had played games on the computer for a while, but eventually, Trin, being full of irksome intellectual curiosity, wanted to know everything about the bloody machines. At first, the thought only bored me, but I started seeing the things that she was learning how to do and I wanted to do them too.
Trin roped me into a lot of things by learning how to do them, she usually taught herself, and then made them look way cool. She did that with computers, a few forms of martial arts, that I never cared about, and even some extreme sports.
It was during our early high school years that I discovered that Trin might be afraid of heights. She refused to do the high dive when we did swimming. She called me an idiot when I suggested that we should up to the roof. She wanted reasons for such an idea. Why in the hell would I have reasons to go to the school roof aside for the fact that we weren’t allowed up there? I was actually going to pretend to jump to see if anyone cared, but it wasn’t enough to get her to go up there. She just was no good when it came to high places.
She and I were actually an odd pair and I suppose I realized that while we were in high school. She was so much more low-key than I could ever be. It never was that I wanted people to notice me; it was just that it was fun to bug out. I also liked making people wonder “what the fuck is wrong with that kid?” For a long time, people had been trying to tell my parents that I was brain-damaged. It was just hard to believe with the grades that I always got that my brain was anything less than perfect; although some people did argue that I just cheated off of the harpy. Like she would let me cheat off of her, yeah right.
High school was about the time that we got into our fashions. Trin got into her pinks and yellows, mostly dull colors; she picked up her light blues fairly recently. She typically didn’t like bright colors; I figured it was because those might call some attention to her and she never was looking to do that. Weirdo.
My fashion, if it could be called that, started out with my wearing my kimonos to school. Once I ran out of kimonos, I realized that I didn’t want to go back to jeans. For a minute, I considered giving up on pants altogether and getting a wardrobe entirely of kimonos. My father said that he didn’t have a problem with me just wearing kimonos as along as I was the one buying them, which sort of shut me down. Those things were expensive and I was unemployed.
(Trin)
I would just like to clear up the air, I was never afraid of heights. Just because I fail to see the appeal in climbing up to the roof to pretend that I was going to kill myself didn’t make me afraid of heights. Just because I always gave up the window seat whenever I got in an airplane didn’t mean I was afraid of heights. I had been to plenty of high places in my life and never once was I afraid. I would never be scared of something so silly and plain ridiculous.
Ask yourself this, how can a person that was willing to taunt Global Justice be scared if anything as trivial as heights? I had laughed in the face of GJ and at heights. I was never afraid of heights.
(Shin)
I know it as a fact, she was scared of heights. Don’t let her fool you.
Next time: Trin and Shin do some work for Global Justice and do some work to Global Justice. You also find out what Shin’s mother does for a living.