by Robin Benway
Joaquin smiled, more because Linda expected him to smile than because he actually wanted to.
GRACE
Adam’s mom decided not to press charges against Grace, which was nice of her. The school had a zero-tolerance violence policy, but it also had a zero-tolerance bullying policy, and since Adam had started all the drama, the school decided that he was technically responsible. (Also, Adam’s mom was a single mom and she was pretty upset with him for taunting Grace with the sound of a baby crying. There may have been some shouting coming from the principal’s office soon after she arrived at the school. Grace may or may not have heard it as her mother signed her out in the office.)
Of course, the school wasn’t thrilled with Grace, either, but she heard her mom say something about “hormones” and “baby” on the phone to them while she stood just outside Grace’s room, and apparently those were words that terrified school administrators. Grace was also fairly certain that she was the first pregnant girl in the history of the school, and she also knew that schools didn’t exactly get great ratings for having a high teen pregnancy rate.
In the end, they compromised. Grace would do home schooling for the rest of the year and then go back for her senior year in the fall. It sounded less like a compromise and more like a present, honestly. Grace would have been fine if she’d never had to walk down those hallways again. She almost hoped that her parents would send her off to one of those East Coast boarding schools that were always in movies. She could start over, surrender her old self, every single wrong decision she had made, and become someone else.
But she knew she couldn’t outrun her past. Or Peach. She would never be able to outrun Peach.
Her mom called Grace downstairs around eleven that Saturday morning. Grace was fairly certain that her mom had hit the limit of her patience for Grace’s stay-under-the-covers-and-binge-watch-bad-TV habit. The day before, her mom had made Grace change the sheets and clean out from under her bed, and “open a window—it smells like a hobbit hole in here.” (Grace’s mom wrote a thesis on Tolkien in college, so she referred to a lot of things as “hobbit holes.” Grace’s dad and Grace had learned to roll with it.)
“Here,” she said when Grace came downstairs. “I need you to return this for me.” She handed her a bag from Whisked Away, a cooking-supply store.
Grace let go of the banister, catching herself before she fell down the last step, and peeked in the bag. “What is it?”
“Something that needs returning.”
Grace poked around at the tissue paper, ignoring her. “What are these?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Grace ignored her some more. It was a tiny ceramic fried egg nestled in an equally tiny ceramic skillet. “Are these . . . ? These are salt and pepper shakers!” Grace held up the egg. “I can’t tell if these are terrible or amazing.”
“They’re an insomnia purchase,” her mom said. Her insomnia caused her to buy a lot of things online around three in the morning, things that were often returned as soon as they arrived, once she’d seen them in the cold, harsh light of day. (Grace suspected that insomnia was also how her mom had made it through all the Tolkien books.)
“They’re terrible,” Grace finally decided. “Dad will hate them.”
“Dad does hate them!” her dad yelled from the kitchen.
Her mom raised an eyebrow at Grace as if to say, Do you see what I’m dealing with here? “Just please return them,” she snapped, handing Grace a twenty-dollar bill. “You can get yourself a giant fancy coffee or frozen yogurt or something.”
Luckily for Grace’s mom, Grace was easily bribed. She took the salt and pepper shakers. And the money. And the car keys.
Once Grace pulled in at the shopping center, though, she realized that she had made a huge mistake, one much bigger than salt and pepper shakers. It was a Saturday, also known as a nonschool day. The parking lot wasn’t too crowded, and she didn’t recognize any of the cars from her school’s parking lot, but that didn’t make her suddenly nervous stomach feel any better. After all, the last time Grace had seen any of her classmates, she had been punching one of them in the face. She wasn’t exactly looking to repeat the experience.
If Grace’s mother had done this on purpose just to “get her out of the house,” Grace was going to kill her.
Grace put on sunglasses as she skulked across the parking lot, then took the back way to the store rather than go past all the pretty fountains with the splash pads for the little kids. Grace didn’t think she could handle seeing them, hearing them shout about the water, without thinking of what Peach might look like at that age. Just seeing a baby on TV made her change the channel. It was like her heart was being stabbed with the most immense kind of love, and regardless of its source, the pain was still too much to handle.
Whisked Away was pretty much empty when Grace finally made her way there (she guessed browsing for kitchen appliances wasn’t everyone’s ideal thing on a Saturday morning). She got in line behind a woman who was paying with a check. A check.
Grace wondered if the woman’s cart and oxen were double-parked outside.
Just as it was her turn to get up to the register, though, Grace saw a few people come in. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them from school. Two girls who had always seemed nice enough, but Grace suddenly wanted to fall down a hole like Alice, disappear into Wonderland before anyone could see her, and her heart started beating a pattern that felt like a gun going off at the start of a race, over and over again, telling her to run.
She didn’t run, per se, but she left the line and did a ridiculously fast walk toward the back of the store, near the clearance section, where they did their cooking classes. It was deserted back there, and cooler, too, and she stood under the draft of an air vent and tried to catch her breath.
It was so stupid. They probably didn’t know who she was, and even if they did, who cared? It wasn’t like they had caught her trying to rob the store at gunpoint.
Grace knew all this, of course, but it was taking her heart a little longer to catch up with her brain.
“Can I—oh. Hi.”
Grace turned around, ready to tell the salesperson that she was fine, that she didn’t need help, she was just browsing, anything to get them away from her, when she realized who it was: Rafe, the guy from the dreaded formaldehyde bathroom.
Of course it’s you, Grace thought. Of course it is.
“Oh, hi,” Grace said instead. “Hey. I was just, um, yeah. I’m returning some stuff.”
“Cool,” he said, but he didn’t move. The green apron he had to wear made his eyes look even more brown, but it might have just been the light. Or the reflection from the Teflon cookware display case. That was probably it.
“Yeah,” Grace said again. She sounded super intelligent. This was easily her best conversation ever. “You, uh, you work here?” Gold medal–winning conversation, for sure!
“No, I just like aprons,” Rafe said. He said it so seriously that she blinked, wondering if maybe she had accidentally struck up a conversation with a psychopath who had a thing for baking. Then he smiled. “Kidding!” he said. “Sorry, no one gets my humor. I’m kidding. I work here. But I do like the apron. Don’t tell anyone.”
Grace nodded, trying to figure out how to get out of both the conversation and the store as soon as possible. “It has pockets,” Grace said. “That’s always nice.”
“It is,” Rafe said, then stuck his hand in the front pocket and flapped it a little. “Room for all my secrets. Sorry, that’s me attempting humor again, in case you couldn’t tell.”
He was somewhere between embarrassing and charming. Grace couldn’t decide if she liked him or just felt bad for him. “Got it this time,” she said.
“So, you’re returning something?” he asked, and okay, Grace had to give him credit. It couldn’t be easy trying to make conversation with a girl who he had last seen crying on the floor of a bathroom because she had just punched another
boy, all while dead animals were being hacked up next door in the name of science.
“I am,” Grace said, then held up the bag. “For my mom. She has insomnia and buys a lot of stuff online, then returns it.”
“Ah. I can help you with that. The return, not the insomnia.”
Grace glanced up toward the front of the store. “Could you, um, maybe do it back here?” she said.
Rafe followed her gaze, then looked back at her. “Is there a terrible customer up there or something?” he asked. “Does someone smell?”
“No, just . . . you know, some people from school.”
“Ah,” he said. “You spend five days in a row with them, and now it’s the weekend and you still can’t get rid of them.”
“Something like that,” Grace said, but he smiled at her in a way that made Grace wonder if he knew the real reason she didn’t want to go up there.
“I’m glad to see you again,” he said as he led her toward the back register. “Only, you know, without the formaldehyde smell this time.”
“I tried to warn you about that,” she told him. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“Yeah, that was just an interesting experience all around.” He took the package from Grace without looking up at her. “What are these?”
“Salt and pepper shakers,” she said. “I told you, insomnia. She makes some weird choices around three a.m.”
“I can’t tell if these are terrible or amazing.”
“That’s what I said!” Grace cried. “My dad voted for terrible, though, so . . .”
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, but she ignored it.
“Soooo,” Rafe said as he started to do the return. “Who else have you been punching? You gotta stay sharp, you know. A ninja never rests.”
“I’m not an actual ninja.”
Rafe pushed a bunch of buttons on the keyboard in front of him. “How do you know you’re not?”
“Don’t you need some kind of . . . certification? Like a badge or a diploma?”
“Dunno. They never stick around long enough for me to ask.”
Grace smiled despite herself. “Haven’t punched anyone since,” she admitted. “That was just a one-off.”
“Did your parents ground you for the rest of your life?”
“No.” She watched as he rang up the return, expertly flipping the tiny egg in the frying pan like he was actually cooking it. “My parents are sort of tiptoeing around me right now.”
“Oh yeah?” He glanced up at her from the register. “Why? Afraid you’ll punch them, too?”
“Has no one told you?” Grace finally asked. “Seriously?” Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it again.
“Told me what?” Rafe handed her the receipt. “I just credited your mom’s account.”
“So wait, you seriously don’t know why I punched that guy and . . . ?”
“See, that’s one of the things that sucks about being a new kid at school. You don’t have any friends to fill you in on all the dirt.”
Grace felt her heart sink. No wonder he was being so nice to her. He had no idea. “Consider yourself lucky.”
“I’ll do one better. I’m supposed to go on my break right now. You want to get frozen yogurt or something? You can catch me up on everything I should know. Be my very own TMZ.”
Grace hadn’t had frozen yogurt since before Peach. Just the thought of that tart berry taste had made her stomach ache with nausea, but now it didn’t sound so terrible.
Getting frozen yogurt with someone else, on the other hand, was a different story. A bad story. A story that sounded very terrible.
“Look, I need to tell you something,” Grace told Rafe, facing him head-on. She had a really hard time looking people in the eye lately. It was almost like it made her head feel heavy, like she had to look down or away in order to keep her equilibrium.
“Well, that sentence never leads into anything good.”
“I just . . . I’m not really looking to hook up with or date anyone right now, okay? I don’t want to.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Rafe held up his hands and looked around like Grace had just threatened him with a gun and told him to empty the register. “Who said anything about hooking up or dating? I said yogurt. They don’t even rhyme!”
He was making Grace smile despite herself. Max had done the same thing, too, once upon a time.
“I just like eating frozen yogurt and I thought that you might like eating frozen yogurt, too,” he continued. “And my break’s only fifteen minutes, anyway, so that would be a really cheap date. You shouldn’t date me—I’m obviously terrible at it.”
“You’re very odd,” Grace said after a minute.
He shrugged. “My siblings are way older than me. I’m basically an only child. I spend a lot of time talking to myself.”
“Me, too,” Grace said, before suddenly realizing that she kind of wasn’t an only child—not anymore. “Well, sort of. Long story.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t push. “Frozen yogurt?”
“Fine,” Grace said. “But I’m paying for myself.”
“Duh. I work at a kitchen supply store—how much money do you think I make?”
There wasn’t a line at the yogurt place, which was nice. Grace wasn’t sure what she would do if she recognized someone from school. Or Janie. Or Max. The thought made nervous sweat pop up along her spine.
In front of her, Rafe squinted at the toppings. “What do you think? Yogurt chips?”
Grace shook her head. “No, they get stuck in your teeth.”
“Wise, so wise.” He reached for the Fruity Pebbles, shaking some onto his yogurt, then gummy bears. Grace took some pomegranate seeds, then some strawberries, before realizing that she was choosing things that would be healthy for Peach. When things had felt so out of control, all Grace could do was make sure she was healthy, so she had learned about antioxidants and omega-3s and folic acid.
Grace set down the strawberries and reached for the cookie dough bits instead.
“You know that that has raw egg in it, which could give you salmonella and—”
Grace looked Rafe right in the eye this time, then popped some dough in her mouth.
“Okay then,” he said. “Moving on.”
When they got to the register, Grace handed the cashier the money her mom had given her. “Wait, I thought this wasn’t a date!” Rafe yelped. “You can’t pay.”
“Courtesy of my mom,” Grace told him. “And her insomniac ways.”
“Nice,” Rafe said. “Tell her thanks. And now I wish I had gotten extra gummy bears.”
“You don’t mind?” Grace took her change from the cashier. “The last boyfriend I had always paid for everything.” She led them to a booth as far away as possible from the shop’s windows.
“Fancy guy. Does he go to our school?”
Grace nodded.
“And he’s your ex?”
Grace nodded again.
“I’m really enjoying this game of charades, by the way. First word, sounds like?”
Grace smiled and took her spoon out of her mouth. “The guy that I punched? It was his best friend.”
Rafe’s eyes widened. “Wow. You’re ice cold.”
“He deserved it.” Grace watched as a mom pushed a stroller past the window, hustling to get wherever she was going.
Rafe started stirring the Fruity Pebbles into his yogurt, making the colors bleed into a rainbow swirl. “So, are you going to tell me why you punched your ex-boyfriend’s best friend and why your parents didn’t ground you for it and why you don’t come to school anymore?”
“How do you know I don’t go to school anymore?” Grace’s phone buzzed again, a reminder notice.
Rafe shrugged. “I notice things.”
“You really want to know?”
He nodded.
Grace took a breath, looking out the window again. The mom and the stroller were gone. “Because I got pregnant and had a baby last month.” The words r
olled out of her mouth like they had been waiting to escape.
Rafe blinked. “You have a baby?”
“I had a baby. I gave her up for adoption.” Grace had to force those words out. “She’s with a really good family, though.”
That sharp, piercing love pain stabbed her right between the ribs.
Rafe nodded to himself. He was still stirring the yogurt, and it was turning a pinkish shade of gray. “Wow. Okay. Wow.”
“The guy I punched, it was Adam—my ex Max’s best friend—and on my first day back, he played the sound of a baby crying on his phone.” Grace shrugged, like that was something that happened to normal, average, nice people every single day. “I just lost it.”
“What was her name?”
Grace looked up. No one had asked her that question. No one had ever asked about Peach since the day she had been born. “Milly,” she said. “Amelía. But I called her, um, Peach. In my head, that’s what I call her.”
“Do you miss her?”
Grace nodded and took a bite of yogurt before Rafe could see her chin wobble. “Every day.”
“And your ex?”
“He didn’t want anything to do with her. His parents, they pretty much said no way. He signed away his rights about two seconds after he found out about her.”
“This is the same guy who paid for everything on your dates?” When Grace nodded, Rafe sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. “Well, chivalry is officially dead. Who wants a guy who can buy you frozen yogurt but not take care of a baby?”
“You didn’t even buy me frozen yogurt,” she pointed out.
“Fair point,” he said. “You can’t count on anyone anymore.” His tone was soft, though. Grace knew that he wasn’t being mean. She had gotten good at being able to tell the difference in people’s voices, the ones who had said, “Oh, you’re pregnant!” versus “Oh. You’re pregnant.”
Rafe popped one of her cookie dough bites into his mouth. “Well, now I’m glad you punched that guy. You should’ve punched your ex, too.”
Grace raised her plastic spoon. “Hear hear,” she said, and he clinked his spoon against hers. “Next time for sure.”
