The Color Of Grace (4 page)

Bridget’s face crinkled with misery. Adam’s shoulders deflated
and his features fell. Schy reached out to cover my hand.

I opened my mouth to apologize. This was supposed to be a
happy, memory-making night full of fun and laughter.

A party.

Not a funeral.

“Who had the barbecue wings and fries?” the server asked,
fortunately diverting another touchy topic. She flipped out a stand and set
down the large, round serving tray to form a makeshift table. Then she passed
the plate of wings to Bridget when she lifted her hand.

Methodically, the server distributed our orders and then
scooped up the empty tray and stand before she whisked them both away after
asking if we needed anything else. All too soon, she was gone, leaving only silence
in her wake.

I stared down at my potato skins and quesadillas, too
chicken to risk a glance at my friends. Upset at myself for disturbing the
light mood we’d had going before I had opened my big mouth, I lifted my fork
and knife, inhaling the spicy aroma of my meal.

“We’re going to miss you too,” Bridget said.

I peeked an eye up. Bridget, Schy, and Adam hadn’t touched
their meals but were staring at me with sympathetic gazes that made my gut
hurt.

“It’s not going to be the same without you,” Adam added.

Schy sniffed out a sound of annoyance. “You can’t leave,
Grace. You just can’t. We should all talk to your mom together, convince her
you need to stay at Hillsburg. That’s just all there is to it.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Schy wasn’t finished. “If it
makes her feel better, Adam and I could even offer to come and pick you up in
Osage each morning for school. We’ll take you every day.”

Bridget nodded vigorously. “That’s a great idea. Adam’s a
really safe driver. Even your mom can’t argue that point.”

My eyes flooded with tears. “You guys are too wonderful.” I
wiped at the monsoon pouring down my cheeks. “But you can’t do that. Do you
know how much gas it would cost to—”

“We don’t mind,” Adam said. “Really, Grace. We’re a
foursome. The group can’t be split apart.”

I moaned out my misery. “I’ll see you as often as I can. And
we’ll talk on the phone, like, every night, and Facebook each other
constantly.”

Another miserable silence ensued before Bridget spoke.
“There’s only one good thing about this.”

“What’s that?” I had to ask, though my tone held no semblance
of hope.

She wiggled her brows. “You’ll get to see Ryder Yates
again.”

As I blushed, Schy brightened. “That’s right. You have to
tell us everything that happens when you see him. Everything.”

“You know, I might not see him,” I started logically. “He’s
a senior. There’s no way we’ll have any classes together and—”

Schy bulldozed right over that idea. “Of course you’ll see
him. Southeast isn’t any bigger than Hillsburg. You’ll probably bump into him
as soon as you enter the school.”

Next to me, Bridget let out a dreamy sigh. “I just love his
name. Have I mentioned how much I like his name?”

“Only about a million times,” Adam mumbled, picking up his
cheeseburger and taking a ferocious bite.

“I like it too,” Schy decided. “It sounds good with Grace.
Ryder and Grace. Should be easy for Adam to make a song for you two when you
hook up.”

I flushed even more scarlet and opened my mouth to shoot
down that idea, but Bridget chimed in, “Aww. Are you really going to write a
song for them? That’s so sweet.”

A pickle slipped out the back of Adam’s burger and plopped
onto his plate. His eyes grew as he sat up straight. “Uh…yeah. Sure. I guess I
could.” He glanced toward me. “If you want.”

“No, I don’t want,” I muttered. “Because we’re not going to
hook up
.”

My adamant tone surprised everyone. They pulled back in
their seats with raised eyebrows. I curbed the urge to apologize, but honestly,
I didn’t want to discuss the topic anymore. It still made me intensely
uncomfortable and mortally embarrassed.

Schy huffed out a disgruntled sniff. “Geesh, Gracie. Deflate
our hopes, why don’t you. I just thought it’d be nice if
one
of us actually went on a date before we graduated high school.”

“Yet another stigma society puts on teens,” Bridget spoke
up, “making us think we’re losers if we don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend by
a certain age. Why can’t we just focus on who we are and what we want to be?”

Adam, Schy, and I exchanged glances before we burst out
laughing.

And just like that, things smoothed back to normal. We
laughed, and ate, and gossiped through the rest of the meal.

Almost two hours later, we finally departed the restaurant.
A freezing wind greeted us as soon as we stepped outside. I pulled my dad’s old
logging coat—as I called it—more snuggly around me.

I’d taken up wearing it since an afternoon about four weeks
earlier when Mom had packed a box full of memories from the long-forgotten
possessions stacked on the top shelf in the hallway closet.

Still avoiding the task of cleaning out my room, I’d volunteered
to pack the bathroom. I’d just stepped out into the hall for a break when I’d
found her holding the jacket to her chest and rubbing her fingers over the
woolly material. It was black and red plaid, ugly as all get out, but she’d
caressed it as if it were fine silk.

When she’d caught me watching her with a sketched eyebrow,
she’d smiled. “It was your father’s. Ratty old thing was his favorite coat.”

Immediately, my confusion had melted away and sympathy had
filled me. Feeling as if I needed to share the moment with her, I’d shuffled a
step forward and reached out a tentative hand to touch the fabric too. It was
as scratchy and coarse as it looked, but I’d smiled anyway.

Mom had thrust the entire bundle at me, catching me off
guard; I’d almost dropped it before my fumbling fingers had wrapped around the
bulk. “Here,” she’d said. “You take it. If you have a son someday, maybe the
style will be back in fashion and he can wear it.”

But I’d decided, forget someday. I was going to wear the
coat myself. After a good laundering—actually, after about three times through
the wash—making it smell mountain spring fresh, I’d switched out my regular
coat for it.

It swallowed me whole. The arms were so long; they covered
my hands down to my knuckles, and the girth was wide enough for two of me to
fit inside.

But at least it was warm, the warmest coat I’d ever worn. I
found myself wearing it everywhere despite how much I had to look like a poor
orphaned waif. Mom always watched me with half a smile and watery eyes whenever
I stepped out of the house with it on, so I kept wearing the huge thing despite
fashion or reason.

Bundled in my dad’s coat on that frozen night of my going
away dinner, I shivered. The thick bulky fabric couldn’t even protect me from
the icy wind that swept up. I huddled closer to Bridge, who bumped into Adam,
who already had Schy plastered to his other side, seeking warmth. Together, the
four of us shared our body heat as we raced toward Bridget’s old sedan. We
drove to Adam and Schy’s house with the heat blowing full blast.

Yet still, the ever-present doom of my approaching future
kept me chilled the rest of the night.

Chapter 4

I would always remember that worried look on my mom’s face,
the way she had bit her bottom lip and eyed me as if she had bad news to
disclose, when she had come into my bedroom one night three months ago, slipped
the door closed, and sat gingerly on my bed.

Totally freaked me out. I thought she had cancer or
something.

When she had said Barry had proposed, she had looked
nauseated with worry. But I had been so happy I had screamed and hugged her,
repeating, “I’m going to get a dad. Wow. I’m really getting a dad.”

Okay, yes, I already had a dad. But he’d been dead for
thirteen years. His name had been Daniel. I was three when it happened, so I
don’t remember him. At all. Mom says I was a major daddy’s girl, and I like to
think that was true as a way to, you know, apologize to him for completely forgetting
his face, and his voice, and his smell, and all that.

Still, the idea of a living dad had totally excited me. And
I hadn’t been upset about Mom remarrying at all. It had been pretty much a
relief, actually. I’d been wickedly concerned about her since I started high
school when college suddenly loomed ahead. Soon, I’d be moving out and heading
off to some university, and Mom would be left all alone.

That just wasn’t acceptable.

So you could say I’d been working on her for years to find
some nice, handsome man and settle down. I had been happy when she’d finally
mentioned Barry’s name at supper one evening.

Of course, I’d had to meet him first, and he’d had to pass
my inspection, which he’d done with flying colors. The first time Mom had
invited him over, he had given me a single pink rose.

I was a goner from that point on. Barry had caught me, hook,
line, and sinker. He was a doctor—a dentist to be exact—and my mom had met him
while working as a scrub nurse in the ER after he’d been in a minor car
accident and hurt his knee. They’d met while she’d been decked out in a mask
and surgical gloves and then, yeah, the rest was history.

After my enthusiastic response to her marriage announcement,
Mom’s shoulders had sagged, and she had smiled. But in the next moment, her
eyes had welled with tears. “I’ll always love your father, Grace,” she had said.
“And I’ll always love you. No matter what. You come first.”

I had teared up a little too. Okay, fine, confession: I’d totally
had the crocodile droplets going on full throttle. We’d hugged some more. I
think we talked until midnight that night, opening up to each other about our
feelings, and thoughts, and dreams, bonding like two best friends instead of a
mother and daughter. I had felt so connected to her. We understood one another,
and I knew we’d always have each other no matter what man came into our lives.

The wedding had been a short, quiet ceremony, set in early
November. It had been a warm, yet breezy day, scattering the most beautiful
colored leaves across the chapel lawn. Mom and I had held each other close,
pressing our cheeks together, and grinned at the photographer as we had our picture
taken outside. When we had motioned Barry over to join the next shot, he had
charged forward, wading through the fall foliage with ease, and had wormed
between the two of us to throw one arm around Mom’s shoulder and the other
around mine.

And the three of us had become a family.

I felt better—calmer inside—after Mom married. She’d finally
found her happily ever after. I didn’t have to worry about her, not that I’d
ever admit I did worry. She’d just roll her eyes and retort worrying wasn’t a
daughter’s duty, it was a mother’s.

Uh huh. Right.

She was happy, though. Barry made her almost giggly. That
was all I cared about. Well, mostly all I cared about. One little glitch I
hadn’t foreseen in this happily ever after was the rest of my high school
career.

Barry owned a wonderful house on a three-acre lot on the
edge of Osage, a town not too far from ours, containing a population in the
whopping four digits. His place made our two-bedroom bungalow look like a shack
in Ethiopia.
So, basically, it was a given Mom and I would move in with him. But he lived
twenty-three miles away, see, and Hillsburg High—my home school—became a
forty-some minute trek one way, through ice, snow, rain, and every other
seasonal disaster that made Mom cringe and announce, “No way are you driving
that far every day.”

No way was she going to let me stay at Hillsburg when I’d be
able to walk to Southeast—which just so happened to be Hillsburg’s all-time
school rival.

If I’d been a senior, she might’ve let me drive the distance
for the rest of the year. But being a mere junior, I was forced to—you got
it—transfer.

Oh, the horror.

Since Mom was so happy, I didn’t complain. This would be
best for her and only a year and a half of sacrifice for me. That was the big
picture I forced myself to see. But inside, I dreaded every moment that drew
closer to the big switch.

She’d given me a small continuance and told her new husband
we’d have to wait to move in with him until I finished the semester, except…the
semester was now officially over and even the two-week winter break separating
me from becoming a purple and white dragon had come to an end.

Barry, Mom, and I had barely been living together for two
weeks by the time the Sunday evening before my first day at Southeast rolled
around.

I’d been queasy all afternoon, making myself sick with worry
and hoping it’d turn into a full flu. That way I’d have a few more days to
prepare myself. On the other hand, I also wanted to get it over with and done.

I already knew the first day of anything was the hardest.
The first day of camp, of dance class, of getting my period. After twenty-four
hours of adjusting, the nerves would settle, I’d begin to catch on, and the
worst part would pass. So, I was definitely ready to wade past day one.