Falling From Grace (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  Grace, I apologize if you took what I said today in the parking lot the wrong way. I hadn’t meant for it to offend you. I was referring to everyone else’s minds being boring and predictable, and that that predictability would make them assume that yours was exactly the same, when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

  I replayed the conversation in my head, trying to see where he was wrong, trying to find one thing to contradict his statement, but I heard the words clearly as though he had just uttered them and realized he was right. But did I want to admit that?

  I grabbed my pencil and started writing on a blank line. Why didn’t you say so in the parking lot? I looked at him, half expecting him to answer me verbally, but he looked at the paper on my desk, letting me know the answer was already there.

  I wanted to, but you didn’t exactly seem willing to listen. And I didn’t want to tell you in front of everyone that was watching that I think they’re all idiots and that you are phenomenal.

  I put my pencil to paper and wrote. Where did you go, then? Did you stay outside with the idiots while phenomenal me went inside to feel sorry for myself? I stopped writing, realizing that I had just admitted to the hurt I had felt at his perceived insult. It was too late to erase it, as new text started appearing below mine.

  I stayed outside because if I had followed, everyone else would have as well, and I did not want to proceed to upset you further. Your neighbor showed up just as you walked into the school, and he would have had to witness your pain. As would his girlfriend. But she would have enjoyed it.

  I closed my eyes after I read those last two sentences. I squeezed them shut as tightly as I could, trying very hard to keep my emotions in check, keep the hurt from appearing in the form of tears that would announce to everyone just how affected I was by what Graham had done to me.

  Grace. His voice was inside my head again. I turned to look at him and felt my breath catch as the force of just how beautiful he was hit me like a bullet train at full speed. My imagination went haywire as I pictured the two of us together; there was no justice in this world if someone like him ended up with someone like me.

  The real injustice is that you don’t see how extraordinary you are, Grace. You are beautiful; just because you don’t fit the mold that is set here, that doesn’t erase that fact. You’re loyal, almost to a fault, and you’ve the amazing ability to humble yourself if it means that you’d make someone you care about happy. You’re not trying to deceive anyone, which makes you far better than I truly am—I’m sorry for writing about your neighbor and his girlfriend. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It is very painful for me to see you so upset, your thoughts so full of sorrow.

  My head was shaking with incredulity as I gazed back at my paper, needing something that wasn’t so immaculate to focus on. That he was calling me beautiful was surreal—I probably was beautiful in some Dali-esque, melting clock sort of way—but he hadn’t really hurt me; it was my own insecurities that had done me in, as usual. He’d been the only bright point in my life these past two days.

  I looked back over at him and saw that he had heard that last bit. He was smiling. And it took my breath away completely. My reaction seemed to please him even more and it reflected in his face. His eyes were shimmering. I stared mesmerized at the morning sunlight reflecting off of them, like golden jewels floating in a silver lake.

  What are you, Robert?

  And in an instant, liquid silver suddenly turned into cold, solid steel, causing me to pull back at the dramatic change. The difference in his mood was stark, dramatic. It felt like someone had suddenly removed the warmth of the sun. Madame Hidani voiced a “brrr”, and quipped about missing warm winters in Hawai’i; I knew that I wasn’t the only one to have felt the chill enter the room.

  I tried to read his face, tried to mask the fear on mine, and wondered what it was that I had done to have caused this reaction. I couldn’t think of anything. I opened my mind, trying in vain to hear him, but all I heard was silence, icy and lonely. He turned in his seat, his expression stony, and I could do nothing else but the same. I looked down at the piece of paper in front of me, staring at it, watching silently as one by one, tear drops warped the lines and the penciled words that were in my handwriting. The words they were in response to were no longer there.

  WELCOME BACK

  Tuesday ended as badly as Monday had started. Robert ignored me for the rest of French and all through Calculus. The snub didn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the class, which only hurt more. “So much for promises from beautiful strangers,” I muttered as I headed to the library for third period.

  Stacy’s promise to join me at the library didn’t materialize either, and lunch was spent sitting in a corner of the cafeteria dealing with the stares I received for not only being the pawn in Graham’s sick game of Sims, but now the reason why Robert was actively seeking to flirt with every single girl in the school, angering every guy in the place. He seemed like he was on a mission, going from one group of girls to the next, making them laugh, sigh, blush…

  It continued in Theater during sixth period. Since we had both missed it yesterday, we were both assigned to different groups, each one having to memorize a segment of a play to be acted out the following week. While I was begrudgingly accepted into a group consisting of nothing but pimply faced boys, Robert had been assigned to Erica’s group, which consisted of nothing but blonde haired, pink lip-glossed balls of estrogen—all ready and willing to play the damsel in distress to his Prince Charming. He refused to look at me, which pleased Erica just fine.

  When the bell rang at the end of the day I knew I’d be walking home. I tugged my bag onto my back and completed the journey that I had taken every year since I was a freshman. As expected, neither Dad nor Janice were there. A note was attached to the refrigerator letting me know that they’d be busy packing up her things and moving them here for the next few days.

  Resigned to being fairly alone, I climbed the stairs to my room and fell onto my bed facedown. Déjà vu all over again.

  The rest of that week, and the following two, I suffered the same silence, the same stares, the same torment of watching his flirting, and the ever growing burn in my chest as the jealousy that I didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to admit to feeling, started to take over. It was a monster inside of me, its tentacles burrowing into me, taking root and sprouting new ones whose sole intent was to burrow even deeper, leaving no part of me untouched.

  I didn’t try again to hear his thoughts, but knew that he could probably hear mine just fine, if he was even bothering to listen, and he’d hear just how confused and hurt I was. It wasn’t the same kind of hurt that I felt when I thought about Graham. It seemed to be deeper. But how could I feel something like that for someone I barely knew?

  And how could I feel this way about someone…who wasn’t even a someone? What was he? He could read minds, project his thoughts to other people, he could fix things with the touch of his hand, and make things appear and disappear just by thinking about it. He had the ability to attract people like flies, and he could fill a room with warmth or chill it with ice.

  What was he?

  I didn’t think I’d ever get any answers, not with him avoiding me in the same manner that Graham was. He was unapproachable when he surrounded himself with all of those girls. They acted as shields against me, ready and willing to fend off any contact between the two of us, regardless of who initiated it. Although, any type of contact would have been initiated by me if I had any courage left in me to do so.

  The only part of the day that was endurable was third period when I’d head to the library. Stacy, who hadn’t shown up that first day, did the following day, and every day thereafter. We didn’t talk much—well, truthfully I didn’t talk much—but her presence—knowing that she chose to be there—was comforting in some strange way.

  She was always cheerful when she’d find me at some obscure table in the back. She’d sit and open a book to read, ask me some off-the-w
all question out of the blue to see if she could draw forth some kind of reaction, and then return back to her book when she saw that she wasn’t going to be successful. When the bell rang for lunch, she always smiled and said she’d see me in homeroom the next morning. I didn’t know if it could be classified as friendship but I knew that it wasn’t loneliness either, and anything that wasn’t adding to that was greatly appreciated.

  The third Saturday after school started I decided to pass the time by helping Janice unpack the boxes that she had finally moved in, while packing other boxes of my mom’s things at the same time. Seeing my father’s joy was bittersweet, knowing that it was coming at the cost of seeing the reminders of my mom get shoved into a box to be packed away into the attic until I had a place of my own.

  I didn’t hold that against Janice because I knew that she would have preferred them to remain. But Dad wanted as clean and fresh a start with Janice as possible, afraid that her leaving and moving up north was always imminent at just the merest hint of her being an interloper in our little family.

  After a couple of hours of dealing with dust and mothballs, I remembered that I had wanted to get to the library before it closed, so I left rest of the moving to Dad and Janice, grabbed my bicycle and started pedaling. I had forgotten to pick up my last paycheck after what had happened with Graham, as well as a few books I had on hold that I was sure had come in. More than anything else, though, I simply needed to be somewhere I wouldn’t have to see the type of giddy affection that was starting to grate on my nerves at home.

  I understood that Dad was extremely happy, and it felt good to see him laughing and smiling more often now. But I couldn’t help but feel like the position of interloper that Janice had once filled was now occupied by me. They talked about the baby, about the future, about who was going to cook dinner; every single conversation revolved around their new family unit that I just didn’t quite feel a part of. In just a few short weeks, my entire world had flipped on its axis and it felt as though I were to blame for it all.

  Plus, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the role of big sister. I was going to be eighteen in a couple of months and off to college right after it was born. I wouldn’t be around much, so it wasn’t like we were going to bond or anything, and I just wasn’t looking forward to having to share my dad with anyone else so soon after relenting to share him with Janice. I knew I had time to get used to the idea, and my telling Janice to stay with Dad was kind of my cue to start doing that now, but I just couldn’t do it as quickly as anyone of us would have liked.

  To top it off, it’s not like the kid would look like me. We’d have the same dad, but Janice wasn’t Korean like mom was, and so it would probably look like any other kid in Heath, and fit in that much more easily. Some people got all the breaks.

  I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the car until I tasted the blood in my mouth. My eyes were staring at the asphalt of the street, my cheek kissing its cold blackness. I could see the yellow divider line disappearing away from me…and I could pick out little asphalt rocks that had come loose over years of wear and tear. I moved my eyes down as I caught the movement of something. It was the fingers on my left hand. I was wiggling them without realizing it. I could tell the fingernail on my index finger had been torn off, and it looked like part of the knuckle on my thumb had been eaten by a hungry cat.

  I looked up, unable to move anything else but my eyes to see a pair of shoes walking towards me. They were nice looking shoes; brown, with black laces. The slacks that touched the tips of the tongues were gray wool, and whoever owned those shoes wore white socks underneath those slacks. This was definitely someone who didn’t show his feet much if he was wearing white socks with these pants and shoes.

  I tried to say something but instead, a racking cough took over and I felt the blood bubble out, tasting its metallic bite as it began to slip past my teeth and out of my mouth. The shoes backed away. I moved my left hand out towards them, trying to let whoever belonged to them see that I was okay. I just needed a little help. But they kept backing up and soon, the shoes were gone. I heard a crunching sound and then felt the pattering of rocks on my head and back. Some of it fell in front of my eyes. More asphalt. Whoever owned those nice brown shoes had just driven away, and left me bleeding on the road.

  I tried to move my right arm, but found that nothing happened. I took a silent inventory of all the parts of me that I could move. My left foot could twitch on command, and I could wiggle my toes in my sneakers. I slowly moved my head downwards to see how my legs looked—the effort made me breathless as I bit through the pain.

  It would have been comical had I not known that the awkward angle that my right leg was positioned in was a clear indication that it had been broken. My left leg looked fine except for a misshapen object that was sticking out of a hole near my thigh. It looked like part of the bicycle. At least, the paint colors looked like it belonged to the bicycle.

  Everything was starting to hurt now, and I could feel the sting of my face as the cuts and scrapes there from whatever it was that happened started to bleed. I tested out my voice once more, hoping that I wouldn’t start coughing again, hoping that someone would be able to hear me, hoping that I was in an area where someone could.

  “Help.” I croaked. It was barely audible. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Heeelp.”

  I heard nothing except my own ragged breathing. There seemed to be something pressing against my chest, and it was starting to hurt each time I took a breath. I used my left hand and tried to roll over a bit onto my back, perhaps easing the pressure that was ever building in my lungs, but a sickening crunch, followed by a shot of immense pain down my right side cause me to land hard back on my face and stomach. The coughing started again, and with each racking movement, pain coursed through my body and blood spewed from my lips and nose.

  This was it, I realized. I would die on the road, alone. A victim of…what? A hit and run? I didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t either. Instead of futilely trying to figure that part out, I sighed and pictured the faces of the people that had been important in my life, even if only for brief periods—it’s what’s supposed to happen when you’re dying after all, right?.

  I saw my dad’s face, smiling and happy, his hands placed over a flat stomach that was holding his future child. He was looking up at Janice, love and contentment in his eyes. The vision from this morning at breakfast summed up their relationship quite well. At least he wouldn’t be alone. I’d have hated that.

  I saw the faces of my favorite teachers, their smiles and their encouragement had always been just enough to keep me on the right track, knowing that without it, I’d have never been able to get as far as I had, never have the motivation to keep on going.

  Strangely, I saw the face of Stacy. Though we barely knew each other, she had provided a rare comfort. That one hour every day was like a vacation from the rest of the world. And, though I appreciated it while she was there, I hadn’t realized that I was truly grateful for it, for not having to endure an entire day absolutely alone. I was only sorry that I wasn’t able to tell her so.

  I saw Graham, his green eyes full of warmth and laughter, singing along, very poorly, to a Jim Croce song that was playing on his dad’s stereo in the basement of their house. He had pulled me up to dance, causing me to look like an epileptic marionette, not stopping until I was laughing and singing along with him. It had been the first week of summer, just a few months ago.

  The image became blurry then, and I blinked back the tears that had formed at the sweet memory that now only meant something to me. I would not cry anymore for him, and definitely not while I lay dying. It might have happened a little too late, but I realized that I finally deserved to be happy, too, and I knew what could make me very happy… And then the face that I hadn’t expected, but so wanted to see appeared in my mind.

  Silver eyes, no longer the cold steel that they had been in my dreams, but liquid, sparkling in a face so hear
t achingly beautiful the tears finally broke free and started flowing. He was holding my hand again, and I felt so light, the pressure that was crushing me seemed to just float away. Time was running out, I decided.

  I felt suddenly sad that I wouldn’t be able to spend the rest of my days staring into his eyes, or hearing his voice in my head. Whatever I had done to drive him away from me, I regretted more than anything else I had ever done or said. I had only wanted to know him, because in defiance of reason and logic, I had already come to care for him so deeply.

  Robert’s smile filled my head, and I could feel nothing but warmth flow through me as I smiled back because that smile, I could feel, made him happy. I closed my eyes and sighed. There was no pain now, just warmth and contentment.

  I waited for whatever it was that would come and take me away. The angels, the trumpets, the light; whatever it was that was supposed to be coming could do so at any time. I was ready.

  HERO

  The journey to the other side was taking a while. I knew I hadn’t gotten lost, so where was everyone? Wasn’t there supposed to be rejoicing and dancing and hoopla? Shouldn’t I see faces of people I had lost—people that were waiting for me to arrive?

  And then I heard it.

  Laughter.

  A very familiar laugh, one that I hadn’t heard in nearly a month; the one that had haunted the moments in my dreams where I couldn’t ignore the way my heart had felt. Why was he here, waiting with me for my…erm…ride?

  You’re not dead, Gee.

  Not dead? What was I, if not dead? And why was he in my head?

  We’re waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The police are here, as well as your father. I’m in your head because I don’t think your dad is quite comfortable with the idea of me talking to you when he’s not sure just who exactly I am.