Falling From Grace (72 page)

Somehow, Robert knew that I had read the poem, and he knew that I’d figure it out.
 
“He loves me,” I mouthed to myself as I rubbed my fingers against the words that he had spoken to me that night after the wedding, after I told him that I loved him.
 
That first night I had slept in his arms.
 
He had recited a verse from this poem because he couldn’t tell me directly that he loved me.
 
But now I knew.

I hugged the book to my chest, my newfound knowledge wedged deep between the two, and I looked over to Lark.
 
She was smiling at me, relieved that I had figured it out.

When they dropped me off at home later that afternoon to rewrite my essay, my mind was ready to flow onto the paper, and I spent the next few hours typing away on the computer in the living room.
 
I waved away any mention of food, and refused calls from Stacy and Graham.
 
I was going to complete the twenty pages that evening, while the words were still fresh in my mind and the emotions still new in my heart.

It was one thing to know that Robert loved me.
 
It was something completely different to know that his love hadn’t been something that he discovered when near death, as romantic as that notion might be, but rather something that had been in him for as long as it had been inside of me.
 
I was giddy
—
there’s that word again
—
with my newly discovered piece of information.

As my essay printed, I ran upstairs to grab the note that he had left me.
 
I had taped it to my mirror
—
at the time, it was a masochistic thing to do.
 
I flipped on my bedroom light and rushed over to grab the note, but it wasn’t there.
 
Instead, an envelope had been taped to the mirror in its place.

My name had been written on it in the same fluid script, and so I tore it open and pulled out the small sheet of folded paper inside.

I will be home on the following Friday.
 
Please meet me at the retreat at four.
 
With love, Robert.

He would be home in a week!
 
That was just before Christmas break; the thought of spending two weeks with Robert, unfettered by homework and school nights sounded like my own piece of heaven.
 
I put the little piece of paper back in the envelope and left it on the dresser.
 
I silently made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t touch it again until Friday.

And I kept it.

***

My alarm went off screaming like it always did: loud, loud, and way too early.
 
But, today was different.
 
I jumped out of bed, quickly gathered up my things, and headed to the shower.
 
I stood there for what felt like ages.
 
In reality, it was only about a half an hour, which is usually how long it takes before the water runs cold.

I performed all of the normal girlish rituals that involved a razorblade and foam in a can.
 
I needed to feel feminine, even if only underneath my clothes.

I dressed in a pair of jeans and my Skellington shirt, and put my hair up into a neat ponytail.
 
With the exception of the shirt, I was dressed in the exact same manner that I had been when we had first met, although with the weather being as cold as it had been, I would need to wear a thick jacket over everything.
 
Fortunately, it hadn’t snowed yet, which meant no need for boots and gloves.

I rushed downstairs to grab a quick bowl of cereal and ate it standing up, leaning against the counter as Janice walked in to make Dad his breakfast.

“You’re up early,” she said while yawning.”

I nodded, my mouth full of milk and cereal flakes.
 
I finished and washed my dishes, leaving her to fry the eggs and bacon before my stomach started complaining about my choice of breakfast fare.
 
I was halfway up the stairs when Dad started coming down.
 
“You’re up early, kiddo.
 
Must be an important day.”

I bit back the grin that wanted to spread across my face with enthusiastic glee.
 
It would look more psychotic than ecstatic.
 
I simply nodded quickly, and continued to my room.

I took the envelope with Robert’s note in it off of the mirror, and put it in my book bag.
 
I stuck Robert’s feather, which I had been keeping under my pillow, in my binder, and placed that in my book bag as well.
 
I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked out of my window.
 
The sky was changing from the bruised purples and blues to the blush of morning’s pinks and oranges.
 

The clock on the dresser said half past six.
 
That gave me almost an hour before Graham would arrive to pick me up
—
I still hadn’t found out who it was that had told him about Robert leaving, but he had shown up that first day back to school after Thanksgiving and had so ever since
—
and drive the two of us to school.
 
After he had eaten a second breakfast, of course.

I double checked to make sure that my essay was in my binder and, satisfied that I had everything I thought I would need, I went back downstairs to wait for Graham, opening the kitchen window…to let out the smoke, I told Janice, smiling as I saw a light come on over at the Hasselbeck house.

***

School the day before a long vacation always felt more like one large party.
 
The teachers were lenient in ways they never were on a normal day.
 
Rules weren’t just bent or broken; they were tossed out of the window, or decimated and written out of the books completely.
 
The bells ringing at the beginning and end of classes were now just a mere annoyance as we all shuffled lazily from one class to the other.

During lunch, Lark seemed annoyed that Robert hadn’t told her about coming home this afternoon, and she took out her annoyance on nearly everything she could.
 
She snapped at Graham for complimenting her British accent, and she criticized Stacy for being obnoxious to Graham.
 
Both things had always pleased her before so it was especially shocking to actually hear her demand that it stop.

As the end of the day drew near, the excitement in the school was at its peak.
 
The only time it was ever rivaled was the last day of school, and that was still over six months away.
 
I turned in my essay to Mrs. Muniz in fourth period, who seemed pleased after skimming the contents, and I even smiled at Mr. Branke, who was not his usual touchy-feely self today.
 
That was cause enough to be charitable.
 
Sixth period Theater class with Mr. Danielson had gone over well as we acted out Christmas carols in different moods and accents
—
another exercise in humility, Mr. Danielson told us.
 
It definitely was an exercise, trying to sing Jingle Bells as though it were a funeral march rather than a jovial tune.

When that final bell rang, the school emptied out rapidly, everyone excited for Christmas shopping, parties, and parades.
 
I rushed out of the school and headed towards Stacy’s car.
 
She had agreed to drop me off to meet Robert, even though it was in the opposite direction from the Tae Kwon Do school.

“Thank you, Stacy.
 
I really appreciate this,” I told her as she pulled into the gravel parking lot.

She pulled her lips into a half-hearted smile and shrugged her shoulders.
 
“Hey, at least one of us gets to be happy today.”

I saw her grip the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles turning white as she fought against something inside of her.
 
“What’s wrong, Stacy?”

“I’m just annoyed by the way Lark’s been acting ever since you told her about Robert coming back.
 
She’s not just verbally angry, but she’s also mentally angry.
 
She doesn’t seem to realize that her thoughts cut worse than anything else.”

I understood what she meant.
 
Lark could control what came out of her mouth, just like most people, but her thoughts ran free, and if we were granted the access to hear them, sometimes it was just too harsh and cold to deal with for a normal person.
 
A lifetime of being teased and ridiculed had given me a slight advantage over Stacy, but I knew that it hurt.
 
I placed my hand on her shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly.
 
“I know she doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Stacy.”

Stacy turned to look at me, her eyes red with tears.
 
“It’s not my feelings that are hurt, Grace.
 
She’s physically hurting my mind when she thinks about Robert coming home and not telling her.”

My own eyes widened in shock.
 
“She must not be aware that she’s doing it, Stacy.”

She nodded, more a patronizing motion than anything else.
 
I couldn’t do anything else but hug her.
 
“You’re a good friend, Stacy.
 
Thank you for being mine.

She hugged me back, her smile tinged with a bit of sadness.
 
“Anytime, Grace.”

I climbed out of the car, glancing at the little clock on the radio as I did so, and closed the door.
 
I watched as she drove off and then walked over to the bench where Robert and I had had our first conversation.
 
Where I had first learned he could read my thoughts.
 
Where I knew that I had first fallen in love with him.
 
That little revelation brought a smile to my lips, because it wasn’t silly teenage romanticism as some might call it.
 
It was real.
 
What else could have brought my heart back from the cold and ashy death that it had suffered?

I looked up at the sun in the sky.
 
It was slowly retreating into some light clouds, the afternoon light dimming as the weather gave a hint that things weren’t going to be so clear for long.
 
The clock in Stacy’s car had said it was a quarter past three.
 
I had forty-five minutes left before Robert would show up.
 
I closed my eyes against the warmth of the sun’s rays and thought of Ianthe and Angelo as the clouds moved across the sky, taking with them each minute until I would be reunited with my own falling star.

I waited for Robert until the sun had nearly set.
 
I waited for his mind to fill my own with his love.
 
I waited for him to wrap his arms around me and kiss away all of the trepidation that had settled around me since he had left.
 
I hadn’t realized just how unbelievably bereft I felt without him near, how it had changed me.
 
It was as if there were two Graces, and the one that stood here was merely the photocopy: flat, 2D, and monochromatic, while the real Grace was off floating somewhere with an angel up among the stars and the clouds.
 
And I envied that Grace.
 
I hated her, too.

When the last of the sun’s rays had succumbed to the ever constant pull of the night, finally losing its grip on the horizon, and the colors of the sky changed from the beautiful pinks and oranges of dusk to the mauves and purples of twilight, when the lights of the parking lot automatically popped on, illuminating me with the false brightness that made everything seem sickly and dead, I stood up.
 
He wasn’t coming.

The disappointment washed over me, drenching my skin with embarrassment, pinking my cheeks with anger, and overflowed onto my face in the form of tears that I had promised myself an hour ago I wouldn’t shed.
 
I couldn’t afford to be upset by this.
 
It wasn’t like he was getting off of a shift at the Dairy Queen, I had to remind myself.

This was something that he had been born to do, born to fulfill.
 
It was his destiny, long before he had ever met me, and would be long after I had died.
 
I couldn’t make demands of him, or have expectations that he’d be able to do everything that he said he would when there was something far more important than me he had to concern himself with now.

Sighing, I bent down and reached for my book bag.
 
When I couldn’t feel it, I looked under the bench
—
behind it
—
but it wasn’t there.
 

The clichés in novels and movies about the hair on the back of your neck standing up when something isn’t right really should be taken more seriously because I suddenly realized that I wasn’t alone when that same, creepy feeling appeared on mine.

I heard the rush of air behind me and my heart started racing.
 
“Rob-” I turned, searching for his familiar eyes, and stopped.

They weren’t silver.
 

It wasn’t Robert.
 

“Sam.” I said, stunned.
 
“What are you doing here?”

He smiled at me…sly, sinister.
 
I shivered, but not because of the sudden chill in the air.
 
“I came here to tell you that Rob isn’t coming.”