Falling From Grace (12 page)

Suddenly, the visions were gone.
 
My mind was empty once again, save for my own thoughts.
 
We weren’t moving anymore.
 
How much time had passed since he started his vision sharing?
 
I looked up and saw my house.
 
How had he known where I lived?

Do you even have to ask?

Of course I didn’t.
 
What he couldn’t get out of me the conventional way, he could surely learn from me in another, more intimate manner.
 
I looked at my house.
 
The garage door was shut, which probably meant that Dad had indeed gone to work and wasn’t home yet.
 
Good.
 
I wasn’t ready to face him anyway.
 
I climbed off the back of the monstrous bike and wobbled a bit before his patient grip helped steady me; I knew my legs weren’t going to cooperate with me, fully mutinous now that they had been forced against their will to endure that seemingly endless vibrating.

I pulled off the helmet and handed it to him.
 
“So…um, thanks,” I said, unsure where to proceed with this oddly formed and sudden friendship, or how to process all of the new information I had just gleaned through him sharing his memories.
 
I grabbed the hem of the shirt he had given to me to wear.
 
“Um, I’ll get this shirt back to you tomorrow.”

He took the helmet from my hands, looking not at me, but at my home.
 
“Don’t worry about it.
 
I have at least five more of those at home.
 
You’re going to be alone…”

I shrugged my shoulders.
 
“No big.
 
I’ve spent a great deal of my life that way.
 
I’ll see you at school tomorrow then.”
 
I started up the walkway, turning as he revved the bike.

Thank you, Grace…for allowing me to trust you with my secret.

I watched as he sped off, watched as he disappeared from my sight
—
watched with a small smile on my face as I thought,
it’s my secret now, too.

I clutched my new secret to myself as I walked into the dark house.
 
I saw the clock on the wall said it was a quarter past six, and knew that Dad would be home in less than an hour.
 
I considered making dinner for the two of us, but I was just too hungry and quickly made myself a tuna sandwich instead.
 
I plopped down on the sofa and flipped on the television, looking for anything that could be the white noise I needed to process all of the events of today.

He had said that I was different.
 
VERY
different he had emphasized, and so I was, like a dodo amongst the peacocks.
 
But he was the truly different one.
 
He could read minds!
 
He could send thoughts into others’ minds as well.
 
He could…write papers in another’s handwriting just by thinking about it, and turn a tangled mess of hair into something neat and presentable.
 
It was as if he were some kind of magician.
 

I snorted at that.
 
Magic?
 
What was I, six?
 
There had to be some logical explanation.
 
Maybe he was showing me what he wanted to:
 
a mixture of fact and fiction, to test me, test my loyalty.
 
Well, even if people would have believed me, I wasn’t going to go blabbing to the world that he could read minds.
 
I’m sure that he knew that I wouldn’t.
 
It may not have been thought directly, but my subconscious would have definitely not have allowed for it.
 
And he had already delved deep in there several times today to have known this.

I looked down at my hand.
 
The one he had held for so long while sitting on that bench together.
 
I brought it to my face, as though the warmth that had spread through it was still there, and would reach out and burn my cheek, half expecting to catch a hint of his smell.
 
I wrinkled my nose as the pungent aroma of tuna and pickles rushed up and around me.
 
No mystical, magical scent here.

I looked down at the shirt he had given to me to change into, wondering when it was last that he had worn it.
 
I pulled it to my face and rubbed it against my cheek.
 
It felt unbelievably soft against my skin, and I could imagine him on the other side of that fabric, his warmth radiating through, into me…

I don’t know how long I stayed like that
—
my thoughts lost in my imagination and daydreams
—
but when my eyes reopened, I was on my bed in my room.
 
How did I get here?
 
I looked at the digital clock that sat on my desk, its red numbers bright in the darkness of my room reading thirty minutes to midnight.
 
Daydreaming about Robert had cost me five hours?
 
I looked down at the clothes on my body.
 
I was no longer wearing his shirt.
 
Instead, I was in my usual bedtime uniform of boxers and a white tank top.

I suppose that I had fallen asleep on the couch and Dad had carried me upstairs and changed me.
 
I flipped on the lamp that sat on the nightstand next to the bed.
 
With a surprised laugh, I realized that I felt bereft without Robert’s shirt.
 
I didn’t know why, but I needed to hold it, feel it.
 
Perhaps it was because it was the only proof I had that today had even happened.
 

I stood up and walked over to my dresser.
 
Had Dad placed it there?
 
The basket that had been there this morning was still there, but Robert’s shirt wasn’t in it.
 
I went to check my laundry hamper.
 
It wasn’t there either.

I started downstairs and froze when I heard the sound of talking.
 
I recognized Dad’s voice; it sounded like he was asking a question but wasn’t getting an answer.
 
Was he on the phone?
 
I continued down to see who he was talking to at this time of night.
 
It was not like him to be up so late.

He was sitting on the couch, a laundry basket to the side of his knees, folded clothes piled on the coffee table in front of him.
 
He was talking.
 
But he wasn’t talking to anyone on the phone.
 
He wasn’t talking to anyone.
 
There wasn’t anyone else there.
 

“Dad?”

He looked up at me and smiled sheepishly.
 
“Hey Grace.
 
You’re up.”

I nodded.
 
I picked at the hem of my boxers, trying to figure out how to ask him if he’d been talking to himself.
 
Well.
 
Not exactly talking to himself, rather, having a full blown conversation with himself.
 
“Um, Dad…who were you talking to? Just now?”

“I-I was talking to Mom,” he said softly, sadness plain to see in his eyes.
 
“When it’s just me and I’m doing things that we used to do together, it’s like I can feel her here, and so I-I talk to her.”

Well.
 
That was a surprise.
 
I knew he folded laundry to remind himself of her, but I didn’t know he had conversations with…her, too.
 
“What were you talking about wi-with Mom?” I asked, slowly lowering myself down by his feet, opposite of the now empty basket.

He started placing the folded clothes back into it while trying to find the words to answer me.
 
When he had everything cleared off of the table, he turned to look at me.
 
“Grace, I was telling your mom about Janice, about the baby, and about how much I worry about you.”
 
He grabbed something from the top of the pile of clothes in the basket and handed it to me.

It was Robert’s shirt.

“I know that Graham broke your heart, Grace.
 
I know how deeply hurt he left you.
 
I saw it with my own eyes.
 
But I worry about your actions as a result of that pain.” He gestured to the shirt in my hands.
 
“You were wearing that when I came home.
 
It’s not yours.
 
It’s not even a girl’s shirt.
 
Where’d you get it?”

I squeezed my hands around the soft fabric, wondering how to go about explaining the day’s events in a way that didn’t sound crazy.
 
“A friend gave it to me to change into after I spilled chili all over my other shirt.”
 
There.
 
Simple.
 
Easy.
 
The truth.

He looked at my face, and I knew he’d see that I was being honest.
 
I didn’t expect him to realize that it was only part of the truth.
 
“Graham told me you went off with some guy after ditching school.”

My eyes grew wide with shock.
 
And, anger.
 
“You spoke to
him
?
 
After what he did?”

He blushed, embarrassed at his betrayal and my reaction to it.
 
“I had to.
 
I got a call from the school saying you missed the second half of the day, that you had skipped school altogether.
 
You’ve refused to make any girlfriends, so I had to speak to the only person I knew went to school with you.”

He reached out to pat my head, like he used to when I was younger.
 
I jerked away.
 
He sighed.
 
“I know how you teenagers can react when things get difficult.
 
You want to make yourselves feel better any way you possibly can.
 
I don’t believe you’d ever do drugs, Grace, but there are other ways to feel better…” his voice grew softer.

Now I was embarrassed.
 
Was he suggesting that I’d had
sex
with some random guy because Graham had hurt me?
 
I looked into his face and that’s exactly what I saw.
 
I could feel anger and rage bubbling up within me.
 

“Was that why you changed my clothes, Dad?
 
To
inspect
the goods?
 
To see if I had been
spoiled
by my need to feel better about having my best friend betray me, my father saying that it’s hard to like me and that it was a good thing that he had hurt me?”
 
I stood up, my hands shaking from the intensity of the betrayal.
 
“I got
this
shirt from a
friend
.
 
While you may feel that people can’t like me, there’s one person who has proven you wrong.
 
He likes me, Dad. Genuinely
likes
me, and he helped me today when I was feeling like absolute
crap
.”

I stared angrily at my dad, shocked and hurt that he could think I’d have sex with some stranger just to get over Graham.
 
“I didn’t have
sex
with him.
 
Unlike someone
else
in this family, I don’t need to do
that
in order to feel better.”

I headed back towards the stairs when he shouted my name.
 
“GRACE ANNE SHELLEY, YOU STOP RIGHT THERE!!”

Tempted to keep on walking, but understanding the consequences if I did, I stilled my feet, my eyes drifting to the rough edges of carpeting that butted up against the stairs.

Heavy breathing and mumbled counting were all I heard for a few minutes.
 
Finally, he spoke
—
his voice much calmer…

“I didn’t change you.
 
Janice did that.
 
She told me to let you sleep, that I could talk about this with you in the morning.”
 
The melancholy tone with which he spoke kept my eyes glued to the floor
—
I wasn’t willing to look into his face and see the same in his eyes.
 

“I told her this morning that you weren’t happy about her coming to live here.
 
With us.
 
She said she doesn’t want to move in if you don’t want her to, that she doesn’t want to be a part of this…life, if you don’t want her to be.
 
She doesn’t want to come between us, Grace.”

I looked at Dad and choked on the words that I had prepared in my rebuttal.
 
His eyes were pleading
—
his face full of grim lines and a wan smile.

I remembered that look.
 
He’d had the same expression when he first saw me in the hospital and, seeing that I was fine, had held onto some desperate hope that they had been wrong about Mom.
 
Was it that desperate that he be with Janice?
 
Was he that deeply in love with her that losing her was like her dying?

I turned and sat down on the bottom step.
 
This was confusing me.
 
I hadn’t known that Dad’s feelings for Janice were so strong, so serious.
 
But didn’t he say he cared for her a lot this morning?
 
Yes.
 
He did.
 
Sex?
 
Sure, I knew they were having sex.
 
He never brought her over here for that, but he never lied to me about spending nights over at her place either.
 
I just didn’t know that it went beyond that.