18 Truths (11 page)

We headed to the parking lot together. No campus security stopped us from leaving, not that I was surprised. None of this was real.

As she drove down the highway,
All Apologies
by Nirvana blared from her stereo.

“Wow, George Lucas called. He wants his sound system back.”
“Excuse me?”

“Olga is a huge Star Wars geek,” Nate informed her from the back seat. “I’ll apologize now for all her references.”

I turned around and stuck my tongue out at him like a good sister would. “I just meant you have a really nice stereo for an older car.”

“The stereo is a recent upgrade, a birthday present from my dad. Music is the only thing I care about these days.”

“Well, here’s a fun twist for your viewing pleasure.” Nate leaned forward, resting a forearm on each of our headrests. “I was the lead vocalist and guitarist for an indie rock band when we lived in Michigan.”

Grace raised an eyebrow. “You don’t say? What was the name of your band?”

“Cantankerous Monkey Squad.”

She snorted. “That’s a pretty ridiculous name.”

“That was Conner for ya.” My stomach clenched painfully at my unexpected use of his name. I tried to hide my pain, but Grace didn’t seem to miss much.

“Ex-boyfriend?”

I nodded in agreement because she was a stranger who didn’t know any better and because the idea of Conner as my boyfriend made the pain go away a little bit. Then, I remembered Nate. He had slumped back down in his seat.

After a few seconds of silence, except for Kurt Cobain’s lyrics about screwing everything up, I couldn’t take the heavy anymore. “This song is kind of depressing. Do you mind changing it?”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Fine. Here, take the wheel.”

“What? I can’t take the wheel! That’s the first rule Mom told me when she taught me how to drive. The driver always keeps both hands on the wheel. Two and ten o’clock.”

“Well, my mom wasn’t around to teach me how to drive. Taking my hands off the wheel now.”

I shrieked as she let go and then opened her center console. “I know I have the new Coldplay CD in here somewhere. Is that upbeat enough for our seven minute drive?”

Trying to keep my hand steady, I gave a tight nod.

“You look terrified. Are you always this high-strung?”

Was Grace teasing me already? Maybe this was a good sign. Friends tease each other.

“You know, the rule isn’t two and ten o’clock anymore.” Nate’s voice was carefree again, apparently over my Conner comment.

“What?”

“My Driver’s Ed instructor told me they changed the hands thing to nine and three o’clock after the invention of the air bag.”

“Good job, Mr. Know-It-All. You want a prize?”

“Hey, I just didn’t want you giving our own kids the wrong information one day.”

Grace, having already loaded the Coldplay disc, took the wheel back, but abruptly jerked it to the side at Nate’s comment. “I thought you guys were brother and sister?”

I gave Nate an incredulous stare.

“Um, we are. I didn’t mean kids we’d have together… just the kids we’ll have one day with our spouses.”

Grace nodded, seeming to buy the cover up. “Right. I’m never having kids.”

“Why not?” I asked, although I already felt certain of her answer.

“Well, first of all, every child deserves a grandma to spoil them, and mine won’t have one. You know what? Bump all of that, every child deserves a mother to love them. I can’t even love myself.”

I tried to search for some wisdom I’d read in my eighteen years of life to help her, but I came up empty.

“It’s not who you are that holds you back.” Nate’s words startled me out of my thoughts, making me jump a little. “It’s who you think you are not.”

Grace laughed as she pulled up to the cupcake shop and parked. “Who are you? Some modern day Confucius or something?”

Now I laughed. “You have no idea.”

“It’s from the last book I read,
Seeds of Greatness
by Denis Waitley. I can loan it to you if you want. The book is full of good stuff, if you don’t mind all my highlights and notes in the margins. I’ve probably read the book forty times by now.”

This roused a low chuckle from Grace. “Okay, sure.” She turned her attention toward me as we strode through the front doors while two blonde haired ladies greeted us from behind the counter. “Do you like cupcakes?”

“Are you kidding?” Nate gasped. “Olga lives on sugar. She tried to convince her boss at the bookstore where she worked in Grand Haven to pay her in candy instead of cash.”

I shoved him sideways. “I did not! Although, that’s actually not a bad idea.”

“What can I get for you?” the lady asked, peering at us over the bakery case.

“The biggest red velvet cupcake for my friend the birthday girl here, and I’ll have… Mmm,” I murmured, viewing the display. “What’s the 24-karat cake?”

“Five pounds of carrots and cinnamon frosted with cream cheese, no nuts and no raisins. Would you like me to cut you a slice?”

“Sounds just novel enough to be fabulous! Make sure you cut the slice big enough that it could count for my daily serving of vegetables.”

Nate elbowed Grace. “See what I mean?”

I batted my eyelashes at him. “Can you pretty please get the Black Mountain Cup-uccino cupcake so I can try some?”

“She means eat most of it,” he told the lady. “But go ahead and box one of those up, and a Bonita Margarita, too.”

“Will this be for here or to go?”

“To go, please.”

“Where are we going?” Grace and I both asked at the same time.

“Jinx!” she called. “You owe me a coke.”

“Will you settle for me buying our cupcakes?”

“That’ll work too.” Grace smiled warmly, and I could see the Dr. Judy in her. Then, she turned back to Nate. “So, where am I taking us next?”

He shrugged. “You tell me. I’m new here and despite the smallness of Black Mountain, you have to admit the town is beautiful. There has to be at least one cool place where we can go hang for a while.”

Grace slowly flipped through a catering menu, stroking the glossy pages as if lost in thought. “Robert Lake Park at Montreat College is nearby. Mom and I used to picnic there all the time.”

“Is the park free?” Nate asked, emptying his wallet since he wouldn’t let me pay for the cupcakes. With the added three coffees he’d ordered, the twenty bucks he’d found stuffed inside his spirit guide back pack last night was almost gone.

I still had my twenty, so I waved the bill in front of his face, but he shooed my money away.

Grace cocked her head to the side.

Oops. We’d have to get better about not flirting with each other in front of her, or she may think this was turning into a Star Wars flick. Luke and Leia kissing still made me want to puke in my mouth every time I watched that scene.

“All the parks are free around here,” Grace said in a quiet voice. “And Montreat is actually open past seven.”

“Bonus,” said Nate, holding the door open for us as we said our thanks to the cupcake ladies. “We can go wild and crazy then.”

Another seven minute drive was all it took for us to reach our next destination. The wilderness of the park was breathtaking. Winding paths circled narrow streams all around us. Perfectly crooked branches sprouted from regal trees taller than I’d ever seen before. I lifted my face, letting the sunlight dance across my skin through the shadows. Bees hummed in and out of the flowering plants and a pair of pigeons greedily fought over some seed hanging in a birdfeeder. I inhaled the minty smell of shrubbery while following Grace, smiling at the sound of my feet sliding through the leaves. She led us to the top of some rocks above one of the shallow rocky mountain streams winding throughout the park. On our way up, she tripped among the bundles of craggy roots, but luckily, Nate caught her before she fell. I shoved the curly hair out of my eyes, ignoring a pang of unnecessary jealousy. Still, I mentally checked out her style as if she was potential competition. She had an edge to her. Her black sweatpants were paired with a loose gray T-shirt that, interestingly enough, had a white lightning bolt down the middle of it. The leopard print Converse sneakers looked brand new, not broken in enough for hiking up hills.

Once we completed the trek, we dipped our feet into the cool water while munching on our cupcakes and chatting amicably. “So, what brings you two to summer school?” Grace asked, balling up her cupcake wrapper and stuffing the trash inside her empty coffee cup.

I plunged my fist into the lush grass and released the blades to the wind. “We’ll be seniors this year, so we thought we’d get a jumpstart on our classes and get to know the school a little better before the halls were crowded with students in the fall.”

Grace smiled like an indulgent parent would at the naivety of their child. “This is Black Mountain. School is never crowded. Gosh, I can’t believe you guys are willingly wasting your summer away at school while I should’ve graduated already.”

“Why haven’t you graduated yet?” I hoped my question sounded sincere, but of course, I already knew the answer. The real question was if she trusted us enough to tell the truth.

“I actually tried to kill myself the night of graduation. I was already flunking out of school.”

Again, I tried to act as though this was all news to me. “Why’d you do that?”

Grace smiled, but the gesture looked forced. “Which one? Kill myself or flunk out?”

Nate picked up a pebble and skipped the rock across the stream. “Whichever you feel like explaining.”

She opened the front of her purse and applied some cherry flavored Chapstick. “I guess the two things are really tied together. I just didn’t feel like my life was headed anywhere. I’ll never attend college, so why bother with high school?”

My stomach twisted with the pain of knowing I’d never attend college either. “Why won’t you go to college? If you graduate high school, community college will still accept you and if you keep your grades up there, you can switch to the university of your choice after two years.”

Grace stood, then jumped onto a large rock in the middle of the stream, holding her arms out wide. “With what money, exactly? Since my mom died, we only have my dad’s meager salary to live off of. He’s late on payments all the time, so it’s not like the powers that be would’ve given us a loan. I screwed up my grades way too much to ever earn a scholarship, so when my final year of high school came around, I didn’t see the point in trying anymore.”

I shook my head. “Wow. Pity party, reservation for one, please.”

She grabbed at a low hanging branch over her head. “Excuse me?” Her voice was cold.

Nate’s clenched jaw told me he didn’t approve of my comment, but I had the feeling everyone had given Grace a free pass for far too long, and she needed some serious tough love now.

“If you can trust me for just a second, listen to what I’m about to tell you. There is a higher reason to this obstacle you’re facing. I didn’t think so once. Then my parents sent me to grief counseling after I lost Conner, my—”

“Your boyfriend?” Grace interrupted. “He died?”

Thankfully she stopped me, because I almost called him my best friend, and I needed to keep my story straight. “Yup, and I was right there with him when the accident happened. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t. Afterward, I swallowed the entire bottle of pain pills the hospital gave me. So, my—our—parents”—I nodded toward Nate—“sent me to a therapist who suggested I write a life list of eighteen things to do the—” I paused. I couldn’t say the year I turned eighteen, because that would contradict mine and Nate’s cover story since I posed as an incoming senior, so I wouldn’t technically be eighteen until October. “Um, before I turn eighteen. I felt so small and tired as I wrote my list. Things had been so tough in my life, and my faith was tested moment by moment. But the list revealed this quiet strength within me, and I can see that in you even though we just met. Maybe we can even do some of the items on my list together. It just might be the thing you need to bring some joy back into your life.”

She scowled at me. “I bet you were a cheerleader at your old school.”

I fought off tears, remembering my time with Tammy on the squad. “Actually, I was, and I’m not buying your whole misunderstood Courtney Love routine either. You’re better than that.”

Grace crossed her arms over her abdomen and looked away. “Well, enough about me, Olga! What are your hopes and dreams for the future?”

I studied her, a little hurt by her faux beauty queen cheerleading tone, but she wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. The literary geek in me searched for an analogy that could make her understand. “Grace, you can be like this oak tree here that stands tall, roots firmly planted, bending with the wind, not against it, with roots that will never break, no matter how strong the wind. But growth has to start with renewal, your faith in life being renewed. Don’t you think that’s what your mom would’ve wanted for you? Maybe something she didn’t have at the time of her death.”

Grace turned toward me, repulsion written on her face, and I knew I said the wrong thing. “Yeah, that’s pretty much my philosophy on life, too. Just trust that everything happens for a reason and whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to—”

“I wasn’t done talking! Let’s get one thing straight. You are not my mother, so quit trying to act like one. You’ve never even met my mother.”

Well, I had, but now wasn’t the time to bring up that small fact.

“How could you possibly know what she wanted for me?” Before I could answer, she continued her tirade. “My mother died from alcohol poisoning on my fifteenth birthday, so even if you did know what she wanted for me, I frankly wouldn’t give a damn. So, I don’t want to hear your cute little anecdotes and life lessons. I don’t want to hear your words of encouragement. There’s no surprising strength deep inside me. There’s only the hurt of right now, and right now I want the hell away from here.”

She splashed through the creek, grabbed her shoes and purse off the bank, and bolted for the hills. “Sorry, but I can’t do this. You’ll need to find your own ride home. I gotta go,” she called over her shoulder to Nate.