by Patty Blount
“Hey, Grace!” They tackle me next, and I force out a smile. Kristie walks in, carrying a few grocery bags, and looks from me to Dad. The room temperature drops ten degrees.
“Oh. I didn’t know you were stopping by today, Grace.”
Stopping by? Oh, I see. I need an invitation to enter my father’s house.
“Kirk, I wish you’d told me Grace would be here. I only bought enough for us.” Kristie makes a face, that fake Oh, darn wince that’s really a Too bad, so sad gloat, and I want to strangle her with her freakin’ fake pearls.
“Yeah, Kristie, I get it. I’m not invited to dinner.” Like I could eat.
“Grace, that’s not true. It’s just—”
“Grace,” Dad cuts her off. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
Home. Sure, fine, whatever.
In the car Dad clears his throat. “Sorry about that. Kristie likes to plan everything and—”
“I get it, Dad.” I don’t have a K in my name, so I guess I’m out of the klub. Like I even give a krap.
Mom and I don’t live that far from Dad and Kristie. I could have walked, but I guess he needed to feel fatherly or something. We stop for a light, and the dashboard clock says it’s not even two o’clock yet. “So why are you home during the day?”
“Oh, I’m on vacation this week.”
I swallow down the acid my stomach is shooting up into my throat and just nod. “That’s nice. Would have been nicer if I’d known you were on vacation. Maybe we could have done something together.”
He squirms. “Kristie and I coordinated our schedules so we could be with the boys this week.”
“Oh, the boys.”
He shoots me a look and sighs. “Come on, Grace. Give me a break. You’re seventeen years old. The boys are little and—”
“And don’t need to spend any time with their sister the slut.”
“Damn it, Grace. That’s not fair. I—”
“Drop me here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.” The light turns green, and he drives past the school.
“Grace—”
“Look, I get it, Dad, okay? You wanted a do-over,” I shout. “I’m sorry I ‘dropped by’ without waiting for a written invitation. Just drop me here, Dad.” He turns off Main Street, abruptly pulls to the curb, and just stares straight ahead while I grab my bag and open the door.
I slam the door and hear the squeal of tires as he pulls a sharp U-turn. I walk the rest of the way home, my temper smoldering like oil-soaked rags near an open flame. I can’t believe him. Takes the entire week off and never once says, “Hey, Grace, we’re taking the boys here or there. Want to come?” Does he think maybe it’s been a totally horrible week for me and that I could use more than a five-minute weekly phone call? Hell, no. I kick the front door, send it bouncing off the wall in our entryway. I stomp all the way upstairs to my room, drop my bag on my bed, and blink the sting out of my eyes.
The house is quiet except for a few creaks and groans. Too quiet.
I snatch the heavy chain belt I never wear anymore because it’s—well, heavy—and grip it tightly in both hands. I check my mom’s room, behind all the doors, even in the bathtub, but nobody’s here.
I’m alone.
The house lets out another creepy sound. Why does it do this only when I’m alone? Why doesn’t it moan and creak and sigh when the house is full of people to assure me there’s no psycho serial killer hiding in my clos—
Oh, God. I didn’t check the closet.
I creep slowly back to my room and whip open the closet door, the chain in my hand snagging some hangers and knocking three pairs of pants off the rod. “Jesus, I’m losing it.” I drop into the chair by my desk and scrub my hands through my hair. There’s always homework to do, I suppose. Or watch some TV and try to drown out all the spooky sounds with canned laughter. Usually at this time I’d be hanging out with Miranda and Lindsay—around school, shooting pictures, or shopping at the mall.
I reach for my bag, take out the camera, and connect the data transfer cord to my laptop. One by one, the pictures I shot upload from card to hard drive. The progress bar counts down—twelve remaining…eleven remaining…ten. It starts to sound like footsteps—heavy cleats dropping on each step leading to the second floor…to my room. There are twelve steps—one for each image.
The house moans, and I whip around in my chair with my heart rate lurching into overdrive, but nobody’s here. Six more images remaining. I grab my chain and head downstairs. From the kitchen, I fill my arms with cans from the pantry, stack them in front of the door, and make sure all the locks are engaged. A knife would probably be better than this belt, so I slip one out of the butcher block, hold it out in front of me like a sword. By the time I get back to my desk, all of the pictures are uploaded. Gulping down the foul taste that coats my tongue whenever I see Zac McMahon, I scan through the images and find it—the one. The picture that’s going to get me my life back.
Chapter 18
Ian
Sometime around two o’clock tires screech outside. I toss my rubber gloves to the cart and head to the window to see what’s up. Some guy shoves out of a minivan and marches to the field. I don’t know what’s going on, but it beats locker detail, so I hurry outside to watch just as the coach reaches him.
“Sir, can I help you?”
“Jeremy and Kyle. Which ones are Jeremy and Kyle?”
“Please leave the field, or I’ll have to call security,” Coach Brill warns the angry man.
“Yeah, you do that. I want to talk to Jeremy and Kyle right now.”
Oh, shit. I know who this is.
Coach Brill steps forward. “Sir, this is a closed practice session. I’m going to say it again. Leave, or I’ll call security.”
“I’m not leaving until I talk to Jeremy and Kyle.” The man struts around, glaring at everybody. When I see his face, my mouth tightens. Bright eyes. Just like Grace’s.
“Russell! What did you do?” Jeremy shouts.
I hold up my hands. “Not me, dude.”
The man whips around, points to me. “Who are you?”
“Ian Russell.”
“Do you know Jeremy and Kyle?”
Coach Brill, scrolling through his contacts list, shakes his head, so I stay quiet. The man paces around the field, trying to read names on jerseys.
“Not leaving here until somebody tells me which one is—” He changes direction, hones right in on Jeremy, whose red hair sticks out from under his helmet. “You. Redhead. Are you Jeremy, you little punk?”
The man’s eyes, so much like Grace’s, narrow to slits behind wire-rim glasses, and his face goes red. He lunges, and a bunch of us surge between them. “Whoa, back off, man!”
Coach Brill is on the phone with 911 now. Zac is watching from a few yards back, saying nothing. Kyle looks like he just crapped his shorts, and Jeremy is paralyzed.
Mr. Collier struggles against the guys holding him off Jeremy. “You go near my daughter again, and I will knock you out, you hear me?”
A rumble ripples from guy to guy as they figure out who the angry man must be. Then the stances shift. The guys take off their helmets, lean on sticks, move a little bit closer to Zac. Pleasant smiles are pinned on faces, but muscles are coiled, ready to brawl. It’s a show. It’s a goddamn production. I’m on the fringe, and part of me knows I should close in. Isn’t that where I belong? By Zac’s side?
Coach Brill approaches Mr. Collier slowly, hands out, like he’s a rabid dog. “The police are on the way. I don’t know what this is about, but if you don’t want to be arrested, you should leave now.”
“This is about my daughter. You keep these animals the hell away from her while she’s here. You’re the adult. Anything happens to her, I will come after you.”
“Sir, I don’t know who you or your daughter are, but I can promise you this—my boys will not leave this field without my direct supervision. You have my word.”
Mr. Collier stares hard at Coach Brill and final
ly nods. “I hope you teach them some respect for young girls. One of them already did enough to hurt her.” He glares directly at Zac, but I shift and squirm because it feels like he’s talking to me.
“Who’s your daughter?”
“Grace Collier.”
Somebody says it. Somebody actually has the balls to mutter, “Slut!”
Mr. Collier whips around. “See? This is what I’m talking about!” He flings out an arm in the general vicinity of the insult.
Coach Brill straightens his shoulders. “Who said it? Who said that?”
The guys shuffle their feet, kick the dirt. Coach steps closer. “I heard it. I want to know who said it. And I want to know right now, or this team will sit out the tournament.”
Sounds of disgust and outrage swell over the team. “What? You can’t do that!”
“You really want to test me?” Brill dares them. “Who won the tournament in ’07?”
All of us stare at him in shock. In 2007, our school didn’t play in the All Long Island Tournament. There was an incident with four seniors and a freshman that year—an incident some call hazing, but others call it what it was—homophobia. Coach Brill is not bluffing, and we know it. Slowly heads turn, and elbows nudge. Finally a throat clears. “Um. Coach? It was me.”
Matt steps forward.
It wasn’t him. Matt’s taking one for the team, and I think the coach knows it. Coach Brill crosses his arms, frowns at Matt. “Get your gear. Go home.”
“But Coach!”
“Get your gear. Go home. You’re suspended.”
Matt shifts his weight, glares at Kyle. He grabs his stick and his helmet and leaves the field.
Mr. Collier faces Coach Brill, his anger defused. “Thank you.”
“What is it you think Jeremy and Kyle did?” Coach takes a step closer.
“They cornered her today. Touched her, called her names.” He turns his sneer on Jeremy. “That one told her she’d look good with his dick in her mouth.”
Coach Brill’s eyes almost explode out of his face. “Linz!”
Jeremy jerks like he’s been shot. “Coach?”
“Is this true?”
“No, sir! Kyle and I, all we did was go into the school to use the bathroom, but Grace said we weren’t allowed. We told her that was bullshit. That’s all that happened.” He looks at Kyle, who nods on cue.
In unison, they both look at me, begging me silently to keep their secret so they don’t get benched. Coach looks embarrassed. But Mr. Collier looks frustrated and helpless, and my patience snaps. This is Zac’s fault—all of this is Zac’s fault. He shouldn’t have touched Grace. She liked me. Damn it, she liked me. But he just stands there like the god he thinks he is while the rest of us pay his dues. I’ve had enough. I can fix this. I know what happened. I open my mouth, ready to spill what I know, and…and nothing comes out. Not even air.
Because I’m lazy and will never amount to anything and always looking for the easy way out and am just a big fat disappointment. I grind my teeth together and look away.
“Mr. Collier, I’ve done all I can do.”
Grace’s father nods. “Keep a tighter leash on these boys. I don’t want any more trouble. Grace has been through enough.” He shoots one more look at Zac and leaves the field.
The minivan drives away. I glance back at Jeremy and Kyle. They’re huddled with Zac now. Our eyes meet, and I can tell he knows what Jeremy and Kyle really did. He nods once. It’s a nod of approval, not of gratitude. I turn my back, put distance between us.
I have more lockers to clean.
Chapter 19
Grace
Metal clashes against metal, and I practically faint from fear.
“Grace Elizabeth Collier, what on God’s green earth is all this?”
Crap. I shut my eyes and rest my head on my desk for a moment until my heart restarts. Then I go down to meet her. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey.” She drops the foot she’s rubbing between both hands and limps toward the stairs, where I stand. “Wanna tell me what’s going on here?”
I lift my shoulders. “The house groaned.”
“Groaned?”
I nod. “It was…scary.”
She stares at me for a long moment and then just opens her arms. “Come here.”
I drop down the last two steps and fling myself into her arms, and for the first time since I got home, I relax. After a few moments of just pretending I’m little and will never meet the monsters I imagine under my bed in real life, I pull away. “Thanks, Mom.”
She smiles. “You want to clean this up while I start dinner?”
Five minutes later all the cans are back on the pantry shelf and Mom’s swirling some oil into a pan. “Grace, where’s the butcher knife?” She opens the silverware drawer and the dishwasher.
Uh-oh. “Um.”
She turns to me, gives me the side-eye. “Where is it, Grace?”
“My room,” I say with my eyes on the floor because I can’t look at her. With a sigh, she heads upstairs, so I follow. In my room she reaches for the handle of the knife, half under my math notebook, and wakes my laptop where my picture of Zac is maximized.
“Grace, what the hell is this?”
With a sigh, I drop to my bed. “A picture of Zac.”
“I can see that. What I can’t see is why he’d be on your computer after what he did to you.”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
Mom sits beside me, puts the knife down, and crosses her arms. “I have time.”
I fiddle with my hair, clear my throat. “Okay. Well, everybody believes Zac is like…perfect, you know? But he’s not. It’s a disguise. A mask he puts on.” I shut my eyes and cover my face for a second. “But I know what he’s like behind the mask…when he thinks no one’s looking.”
The breath stalls in my lungs, but I power through the pain. “I thought if I could show them what he’s really like, maybe people would leave me alone.”
“And this shot shows what he’s really like?”
“Yeah. I took this seconds after he found out I was by myself in the school today.”
Mom’s back snaps up straight. “What? What happened to your partner?”
I shrug. “He didn’t show.”
With her lips pressed tightly together, Mom shakes her head. “No, no, that’s not acceptable. If you’re left by yourself in that school, I want you to call me immediately, okay?”
“Mom, I’m fine. I was scared at first, but nothing happened.”
“But it could have. Damn it, Grace! This picture—you said you took it after he found out you were alone. I don’t like the way he looks, Grace. It’s almost…feral.”
My imagination starts running away with that thought, and I can feel a panic attack building.
“Grace, Grace, come on. Deep breaths, baby. You’re safe.”
Mom and Dad used to say things like that when I was a little girl and woke up from nightmares.
I’m not a little girl anymore.
• • •
My alarm rings. Sighing, I kill it and slip the phone back in my pocket and lie back on my bed. I’ve been up for hours. It’s Friday.
Forty-three days.
Forty-three days since Zac hurt me.
It’s my last day of locker cleaning jail with Ian. I’m kind of surprised we didn’t get forced to work this Saturday too, but I’m not kicking the gift horse in his teeth or however that saying goes.
There’s a soft tap on my door, and then my mom pokes her head in. “Oh. You’re already up?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep.”
She walks all the way in, wanders to my desk, glances at the photographs of Mr. Russell’s job that I printed out last night. The mirror above my desk is bare. She looks for all the pictures of me and my friends that are now gone. But she doesn’t say anything about them.
“So I talked to your dad last night. He wanted to see how you’re doing.”
My entire body stiffens. “Oh, reall
y.”
Mom rubs her arms and pretends to shiver. “Whoa. Careful, you could freeze hell with that sneer.”
I laugh once, and she sits on my bed, still in her workout clothes, dark hair pulled up in a sweaty ponytail. “So how much did he tell you?”
“Oh, only that you said he thinks you’re a slut and all of this is your fault and that none of that’s true.”
I try to laugh again. “So everything.”
“Pretty much.” Mom nudges me with her shoulder, smiles like we just won the lottery. “Come on, Grace. You know that’s not true. He loves you.”
I roll my eyes. “Really, Mom? Doesn’t feel that way. Feels like I wasn’t good enough. You weren’t good enough, so he got a free spin. Oh, look what he won! A new wife, a new house, two new kids—boys this time.”
The light fades in my mother’s eyes, and so does that silly smile. “Okay, Grace. You want me to tell you I’m not upset and disappointed and…and brokenhearted over everything that’s happened? I can’t. I’d be lying. It all sucks. Everything!”
My eyes go wide. Sucks? This is not a word I’ve ever heard from my mother’s lips before.
“But I’m not going to sit here and cry myself to death over it, and neither are you. Where’s your fighting spirit?”
“My what?”
“Your fight. Your spit. Your bad attitude. Where’d you hide it?”
“Mom, I don’t feel like snapping on wrist gauntlets and thigh-high boots today.” I fling myself onto my bed and drape an arm over my face. With luck, she’ll leave me here to sleep until I’m twenty-one.
“Not the costume, honey. The attitude.”
I open one eye, sigh, and shut it again. “I think I’m empty.”
The mattress shifts. Mom’s sitting crossed-legged on my bed, facing me. “You know, Dad and I always figured you’d go to law school. Defend the innocent. Change the world.”
I don’t know about the world, but I guess I changed Laurel Point High School. “Mom,” I say and shake my head. “I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m not an activist. I just want to get back what Zac took from me, you know?”
“Grace, I’m so sorry. I am. There’s nothing you can do about that. All you can do now is decide whether you want to move away…or stand proud the way you always have. I won’t lie and pretend I don’t want you to seriously consider that semester abroad. I want you far away from him, Grace. But the more I think about it, the more I get that’s for me, not you.”
