Falling From Grace (4 page)

I shook my head even though inside I was thinking that my entire senior year wasn’t really that important.
 
“I’m fine, Dad.
 
Really
—
I can do this.
 
It’s just school.
 
H-he’s not going to be there anyway, so it’ll be alright.”

He regarded this with shock marking his face.
 
“What do you mean he’s not going to be there?”

Hadn’t Richard told him?
 
Why wouldn’t he have bragged about his son getting into one of the most prestigious schools in the state, with an even more prestigious football program?
 
“Um, Graham was accepted into NC Prep, Dad.”

A moment of silence passed, and then Dad threw down the spatula, splattering the table with grease and bits of egg. “I cannot believe that sonnuva…I cannot believe he lied to you like that.”
 
His voice was drowning in anger, choking on it.
 
I felt the same strangling sensation in my throat.

“What do you mean, he
lied
to me, Dad?”
 

Graham wouldn’t have lied to me about not being at school with me, would he?
 
My mind raced around the fact that our entire summer
—
perhaps our entire friendship
—
had been a lie; the facts were staring me in the face, and yet I just couldn’t accept it.

“Grace, Graham isn’t going to NC Prep.
 
No one is.
 
The school is no more
—
defunct.
 
It’s been closed down for three weeks now.
 
Janice told me over month ago that it had lost a lot of money on some big investments and couldn’t afford to operate anymore.”

Janice was Dad’s girlfriend of the moment.
 
Aside from being the one to last the longest among all of Dad’s girlfriends, she was also the school nurse at NC Prep; how had I forgotten that?

“So Janice is now out of a job?” I asked, trying to buy some time to process this bit of information.
 
If the school was closed, that means that Graham would be attending Heath High School…with Erica…and…me.
 
The forkful of eggs and toast in my mouth suddenly felt like lead; it weighed down my tongue, and the metallic taste of something I didn’t recognize filled my senses as they clobbered each other to occupy space in my already confused mind.

I was so consumed by this new piece of information that I barely heard Dad as he answered me.
 
“Technically, she’s been out of a job for a while now.
 
She’s having difficulties finding other work, both in Heath and Newark, and she’s getting desperate.
 
Her unemployment is set to run out soon.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, pressing down in what should have been a reassuring gesture, but instead felt more like he was holding me down for what he had left to say.
 
He looked into my eyes once more, hesitant, as though he knew that what would come next would cause a negative reaction.
 
“Grace, I asked Janice if she’d like to stay here with us until she can get back on her feet.
 
I wanted to tell you a week ago, but you were still in such a state, I couldn’t bring it up.”

Stupid Graham.
 
Stupid North Cumberland.
 
Stupid me.
 
Look at me
—
reduced to juvenile insults.
 
Why did I have to open my mouth?
 
All it ever did was disappoint me in some way.

“You invited her to live with us?
 
Without talking to me?”
 
I was incredulous.
 
I was angry.
 
I was…hurt.

He looked down at the table and stared at his plate, now full of cold, greasy eggs surrounded by stale toast.
 
“Janice needs a place to stay, Grace.
 
She’s been out of work for too long, and she can’t afford her mortgage on top of all of her other bills.
 
You’re almost an adult, getting ready to head off to college, to a whole new life without your old man.
 
I didn’t think that it would be a big deal if she stayed here.”

Janice.
 
Janice “
Du Jour
” Dupre.
 
Janice “The-woman-who wants-to-take-my-mom’s-spot” Dupre was going to be moving in to my mom’s home.
 
Sleep in my mom’s bed.
 
Cook in my mom’s kitchen.
 
The thought disgusted me.
 
The betrayal to my mom turned the already congealed blood within me to ice.
 
Could things get any worse?

Dad took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly while his hands gripped the table, preparing for what came next.

Of course.
 
Things could always get worse.

“Grace.
 
Listen.
 
I care about Janice a great deal.
 
She’s funny and she makes me laugh, and that’s not something I have done a lot of since your mom died—you know that better than anyone.
 
Your mom will always be your mom, nothing can or will ever change that, and I will always love her, but Janice is giving me a new start…at a lot of things.”

Your
mom?
 
Suddenly she’s no longer just “mom”.
 
She’s
your
mom.
 
And new start?
 
At
a lot
of things?
 
What
things
?
 
What could he possibly need a new start at?
 
The warning bells starting going off in my head.
 
The knocking at the door of my consciousness turned into banging:
 
insistent, desperate.
 
A question quickly formed in my mind, a frightening question that I had to voice.
 
I had to hear the words, even though I knew the answer before they ever left my lips.

“Dad
—
is Janice pregnant?”

His wide-eyed stare, coupled with his silence was, ironically, pregnant with the answer that I dreaded.
 
He slowly nodded his head.

My face burned from embarrassment and anger.
 
“Why, Dad?
 
Oh my God, aren’t you guys old enough to know how to use a condom or birth control pills?!”

Okay.
 
I admit that I went too far, but what was I to do?
 
My forty-seven-year-old father had just knocked up his girlfriend!

I sensed it before I saw it; Dad’s face turned several shades of red before settling on a near ketchup-like color, and it couldn’t have been more of a warning than if he’d actually had it tattooed on his forehead:
 
I was about to get an earful.

“Grace Anne Shelley, don’t you ever speak that way to me again!
 
I won’t be disrespected in my own home; you will do well to remember that, young lady.
 
Yes, Janice
is
pregnant, and how that happened is none of your damned business!
 
Yes, she
is
moving in with us in three days, and I expect you to be respectful to her, if not friendly, because this is
my
house, and when you disrespect someone
in
my house, you’re disrespecting me.”

I stared at his face, his nostrils flaring so wide that I considered shoving some bacon up there just to get him to stop talking about respect and houses, especially when he was planning on disrespecting Mom’s memory by bringing
that
woman into
her
home.
 
I really didn’t like to pay much attention to him when he was angry.
 
It saved me from having to relive the words he’d said later.
 
The words he was about to say now.

“I love you, Grace Anne.
 
I have loved you from the first moment you entered into this world, probably before you were even born.
 
You’re the best thing I’ve ever done, the best part of me and your mom.
 
You make it easy to love you; you’re a lot like your mom in that regard.
 
But while it’s easy to love you, Grace, it’s very difficult to like you.
 
It’s hard.
 
You make it so difficult with your expectations, your guilt!”
 

He shook his head, his disappointment clear, and then said quietly
—
almost too quietly
—
but not quietly enough, “Perhaps it was best that Graham ended your friendship.
 
You always expected more from him than he could give you, especially after Mom died.”

I felt my fingers dig into my thighs under the table and winced; my once numb body had started feeling again.
 
It was feeling the burn of anger, betrayal, and…pain.
 
But this time I wasn’t going to let it turn me into a ball of gelatinous Grace.
 
Instead, I got up, ignoring the outraged expression that crossed over Dad’s face.
 

Déjà vu had me walking upstairs to my room.
 
But rather than throwing myself on my bed to cry myself senseless again for another two weeks, I grabbed my book bag, tossed in my wallet and my binder, grabbed my MP3 player, and left.

The clock read twenty past seven.

I was going to be early to the worst day of my life.

I stood in a line, invisible while in plain sight like any other day.
 
Over half of the senior class was either in front or in back of me, all of us clamoring for our class schedules like junkies looking for a fix.
 
Everyone else who had already endured the wait stood off to the side, comparing classes together.
 
The typical questions were being passed around: who was in whose class, who would sit next to whom, who was going to be closest to the doors for a ditch day success, and who had free periods.

All I wanted to know was if Dad had been right.
 
Would Graham be here?
 
And if he was, would we be in any classes together?
 
It was a strong possibility and I didn’t know how I’d be able to handle that.
 
Seeing him would be difficult enough.
 
My heart, still nothing more than a cold pile of ashes, did nothing at the thought.

And then there he was, standing next to a beautiful girl with a halo of blonde hair that hung down her back like a gold curtain.
 
They had their heads bent towards each other, comparing schedules and laughing, completely oblivious to the icy turmoil that raged within me just a few yards away.
 
When she looked up at him, he smiled down at her, his hand reaching up to stroke her hair.
 
His fingers trailed to her waist, and she leaned into him, her arm wrapping around his in return.
 
I, in turn, felt nothing but the cold September air around me, still warmer than I was on the inside.
 
But death wasn’t supposed to be warm unless you were heading straight to Hell, right?
 

Well, I was in Hell.
 
A cold, dead, Graham-holding-onto-a-beautiful-blonde-Erica filled Hell.

A little cough from behind me alerted me to the fact that I was next; great, caught daydreaming again.
 
I hurried forward and quickly whispered my name to the registrar whose name I could never remember, despite seeing her every single year for the past four.
 
The slightly plump woman with the friendly smile was standing outside her office with her folder of senior schedules.
 
Now, Heath isn’t exactly a large school; our student body is quite small in comparison to some of the surrounding high schools, so comparatively, her task was undoubtedly quite easy.
 
But she hadn’t heard me
—
I had to repeat my name, she told me, and so I did, my voice just a decibel higher, and yet still barely louder than a whisper.

“Oh honey, I know who you are.
 
You’re Miss Grace Shelley.
 
My, you’ve matured a great deal over the summer, haven’t you, sweetheart?” she cooed robustly.
 
She cooed at everyone.
 
She knew everyone.
 
It was nothing special to be recognized by the school’s registrar
—
it was her job.
 
But why did she have to be so loud?
 
I could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on me, burning through my bag, my shirt, my hair.

My hair!
 
I forgot to brush it!
 

Quickly, my hand reached up to what I hoped was a few neatly disorganized strands, knowing full well that the wrath my hair could put down on me probably meant something much worse.
 
What I felt was my own embarrassment doubling, all in the palm of my hand.
 
My hair—or what should have been my hair—felt like I had a blind ostrich’s nest attached to the back of my head, the unruly weave of tangles and knots forming an unrecognizable mass that sat at the base of my neck in a heap.
 

I would need to get to a bathroom quickly to try and fix this, though I was certain that enough eyes had seen the horror that was my hair and the news would spread throughout the school before I’d even gotten a chance to see the damage for myself.
 
I stared at the registrar, trying to will her to hurry up.
 
She rifled through several sheets of paper and finally pulled out what I hoped was my schedule.