Grace

by Richard Paul Evans

  His second trick he saved for closing time. He’d grab the mop and spend nearly an hour mopping the front dining room, a ten-minute job at best. If you called him on it he accused you of low standards of cleanliness. Whenever you had to close with him it would generally take an extra half hour to get out while you did everything yourself.

  Dean jumped up on the back counter.

  “So, spud, tell me about that girl.”

  “What girl?” I rolled another burrito.

  “The one you brought by the other night.”

  “I didn’t bring her.”

  “Whatever, you Pollock. She was pretty tasty.”

  “Yeah, well she’s not your type.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She has taste.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Then why is she hanging out with a loser like you?”

  “Lucky, I guess.”

  “You’re such a nerd.”

  He went back out front. He didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the shift but he smacked me in the back of the head on his way out. I had never been happier to hear his car engine rev.

  Jackie and I had the late shift. I liked Jackie. She was in my math class at Granite and was tall, wore braces on her teeth, and had bright red hair. She also played the violin and was on the chess team, which pretty much put her in the same social class as me.

  She talked a lot about dumb things, like the existence of leprechauns and life on Venus, but I never heard her say a mean thing about anyone. (An interesting note: In her mid-twenties, Jackie became a female bodybuilder and was later recruited by the Women’s World Wrestling Federation. Her violin lessons weren’t wasted. She was called “The Maestra.” After she’d pin someone she would hold them down with her foot, play Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” then break her violin over their head.)

  As we closed up I filled a bag with leftover food. I remembered how Grace had devoured the onion rings so I put a couple jumbo-sized orders inside. Jackie saw me stowing the food in my knapsack. “Mr. Dick would purée you if he saw you doing that.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell. I think it’s a stupid rule. Mr. Dick would rather we throw the food away then take it home. He doesn’t respect us.”

  “Jackie,” I said. “We’re teenagers. No one respects us.”

  “True,” she said sadly.

  After Jackie’s mom picked her up, I locked the back door and rode home. My legs still ached from my walk from school and my shoes were still wet. To make it worse, the temperature had dropped into the twenties.

  Once I was home I didn’t even think about being seen; I went straight for the clubhouse. The light was still off inside and the things I had brought from Grace’s locker were still untouched by the door. I was suddenly worried.

  “Grace?”

  Nothing.

  “Grace, you okay?” I found the flashlight and pointed it toward the corner. She was in the sleeping bag, which was pulled up to her neck. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Yeah,” she said, her voice weak and gravelly. “What time is it?”

  “It’s almost eleven.”

  “I slept until noon?”

  “Noon? It’s night.”

  She sat bolt upright. “I slept all day?”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t look right to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t feel well. I threw up.”

  Now I understood the smell. I turned on the light. She raised her hand to shield her eyes. “Are you sick?”

  “A little.”

  “What do you have?”

  “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, you’ve got to be better by Wednesday for your birthday.”

  Her lips rose in a surprised smile. “You remembered.”

  “Of course. It’s an important day.”

  Her smile spread wider, and again she was looking at me in a way a girl never had. My face felt hot. “I got the things from your locker. I just put everything there.”

  She crawled over and pulled everything out until she found the red pouch. She untied it, then pulled out a large wad of bills. Not just ones, there were tens and even twenties.

  I stared at it in wonder. “What did you do, rob a bank?”

  “It’s my stepfather’s gambling money.”

  “You stole it?”

  She put the money back in the pouch. “It’s not really stealing.”

  “How is it not stealing?”

  “Look, it’s his responsibility to take care of me, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’m using this to take care of me, right?” She had a point. She retied the pouch and put it in the sleeping bag. “I’m not a thief,” she said angrily, though it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Thanks for getting my stuff. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  I thought of telling her about my walk home in the snow and my frozen feet but for some reason I just said, “No trouble.” I handed her the sack of food. “And I brought this from work. You don’t have to eat it if you’re not hungry.”

  “I’m always hungry,” she said, which from what I knew of her seemed to be true. She lifted an onion ring and took a big bite out of it. After swallowing she asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Same as today. School and work.”

  “That doesn’t sound fun.”

  “It’s not supposed to be.”

  “Do you ever play hooky from school?”

  I hesitated. “Sure,” I said coolly. “Who doesn’t?” If I sounded like the liar I was, she didn’t seem to notice. The truth was I had won three awards for perfect attendance.

  “Great, then let’s play hooky tomorrow.”

  I was trapped by my own lie. The truth was I was proud of my perfect attendance awards. That sounds pathetic, but they were the only awards I’d ever received. Now I felt pressured to throw them aside like yesterday’s casserole just because I didn’t want to look dumb for some girl. I wondered if I got caught playing hooky, if my awards would be taken away like Jim Thorpe’s Olympic medals.

  Even worse than losing my awards was my terror of getting caught by a truant officer. I had never actually seen one or was even sure that they existed, but I’d heard about them and I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “I can’t miss work…”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “It’s just until school’s out.”

  “What if you’re still sick?” I asked hopefully.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  I sighed. “Okay,” I said. “I better go.” I got down on my knees to crawl out.

  “Mañana,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow, silly. We learned it in Spanish.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  I walked back to the house with dread in the pit of my stomach. If my parents ever found out I had played hooky, I was dead and buried.

  CHAPTER Ten

  I met Eric’s mother at the grocery store. I think

  it’s peculiar that she rang up my groceries and

  had no idea that I was taking them to her home.

  GRACE’S DIARY

  TUESDAY, OCT. 16

  The next morning I got ready as if I were going to school. Mom made us Cream of Wheat for breakfast and, as usual, Joel put so much raspberry jam in his bowl that his cereal was crimson.

  “Like a little Cream of Wheat with your jam?” I asked.

  He took a mouthful, reading the back of a cereal box. “I like it this way.”

  “I’m going to work early,” my mom said. “We’re counting inventory. Want a ride to school, Eric?”

  Not once since school started had my mother asked if I wanted a ride. It’s like she knew I was up to something. “Uh, no. Thanks. I’m meeting someone on the bus.”

  She looked at me with pleasant surprise. “You have a new friend?”

  My m
other was always concerned over my lack of friends.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend.”

  “Oh. Gra…ck.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Grack?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s an odd name. Where’s he from?”

  “Uh, here.”

  “Hmm. Sounds Hungarian. What nationality is he?”

  “American,” I said. “I think.”

  “Well.” She looked at the clock. “You’d better get going. Maybe Grack would like to come over sometime.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll ask.”

  She walked over and kissed me. “Have a good day,” she said and left the room.

  “Who’s Grack?” Joel asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  He put another spoonful of jam in his cereal. “I have no idea.”

  “That’s just gross,” I said.

  I don’t know how many lies I had told in my life but I was sure that I’d soundly trounced my record in the few days since Grace had arrived. Now I was playing hooky. I wasn’t sure what power Grace had over me, but I hoped she wouldn’t make me do anything worse.

  I grabbed my school bag and started walking for the bus stop. My mother drove past me halfway down the street, waving as she went by. As soon as she had turned the corner I looked back down the street to see if anyone was watching (as if my neighbors suddenly had nothing better to do than to make sure I was going to school). I didn’t see anyone so I turned back. I ducked into our next-door neighbor’s backyard, then crawled through the hole in the fence that separated our yards. (Joel and I hadn’t made the hole, but we’d enhanced it a bit.) I crossed into our backyard and knocked on the clubhouse door. “It’s me.”

  I crawled inside. Grace watched me enter. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come or not.”

  I dropped my school bag on the floor. “Why?”

  “You just seemed a little…nervous.”

  I was glad she hadn’t said “afraid.” “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “The mall.”

  The mall? I thought. The place was probably teeming with truant officers. We might as well play hooky in front of the school.

  The mall was a forty-five-minute walk from my house. We probably could have reached it sooner except I insisted we keep to the back roads, which Grace didn’t seem to mind. If there were truant officers at the mall, they didn’t see us. This made me wonder if they were just boogeymen that school administrators and parents made up to keep us in line.

  We walked, unstopped, into store after store as Grace looked at clothes. For me we made a stop at a bookstore and a model shop. On the way back, we ate lunch at a diner. “Ain’t you a cute couple. You two playin’ hooky?” the waitress asked

  “Science Fair,” Grace said.

  “Oh,” the woman said.

  I ordered a hot dog with relish and a side order of French fries. Grace ordered a bowl of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. Afterward we each ordered apple pie à la mode.

  When no one was around Grace asked, “So, do you like playing hooky?”

  “Sure.”

  “You were afraid we were going to get caught, weren’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “Me too. But I was so sick of sitting inside all the time, I had to get out. Sometimes you just have to take chances.” She looked up at a clock on the wall. “We have about an hour of school left. Anything else you want to do?”

  I shrugged. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ve got to pick up some things. Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’ll pay for lunch. You’ve fed me enough.” Grace brought out the red pouch and paid the check, then we started back home. On the way she said, “I need to go to Warshaw’s.”

  I felt a wave of panic. “I can’t. My mother works there.”

  “Oh. Will you wait for me outside?”

  I thought about it. “Okay.”

  I sat out on the curb at the side of the store, watching shoppers come and go and praying my mother didn’t come out. Grace was gone for nearly twenty minutes—long enough that I began to fear she’d been captured. I was relieved when she finally emerged. She was pushing a shopping cart with two large grocery bags. I walked over to meet her. “Is your mom really thin with brown hair that combs back like this?” She raked her hair back over her ears.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she rang up my groceries. She’s pretty. You look just like her.”

  I suppose that was a compliment but I was more concerned that Grace had been seen by my mom. “We better go home,” I said.

  I pushed the cart to the edge of the parking lot, then we both took a bag and started walking. My bag was pretty heavy.

  “What did you buy?”

  “Food, mostly. I got some bread and shredded wheat and milk; it should last me for a while. I’ve felt bad that you’ve had to feed me.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “You’ve been really sweet. You’re always nice, aren’t you?”

  Somehow this sounded like an insult. “Not always. I can be trouble.”

  She grinned. “But you’re mostly nice. Do you know how I know? When you first saw me eating food out of the Dumpster, even though we weren’t friends then, you pretended that you didn’t notice.” She smiled. “Thank you for that.”

  “I just didn’t want you to be embarrassed.”

  “I wish there were more people like you.”

  That was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. It took us about thirty minutes to get home. We carried the stuff around back. I packed her milk in the snow while she dragged the rest of the groceries inside. I climbed in after her.

  “Want to play cards?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  We played blackjack and Go Fish for about an hour. She won most of the time and even when she didn’t I had the feeling she was letting me win. Finally I said, “Do you know what time it is?”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s almost four-thirty.”

  “I’ve got to be at work in a half hour.”

  “Today was fun,” she said.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  It had been fun. But I was sure there would be heck to pay.

  CHAPTER Eleven

  Hau’oli l hnau is Hawaiian for Happy Birthday.

  GRACE’S DIARY

  On Tuesdays I worked the early shift, which happily meant I didn’t have to close. Even better, it was payday. I was glad Grace and I had gotten food earlier, as it was far too risky to sneak any out today. Mr. Dick had come by to drop off our checks, which he always did grudgingly, and then he stuck around to make sure we were earning our wages. Just before I left I folded my check into the front pocket of my trousers. When I got home I went straight out back. Grace was reading Black Like Me.

  “So about tomorrow,” I said.

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  I figured she just liked to hear me say it. “Your birthday…”

  She smiled. “Can we play hooky again?”

  “I better not. But we’re going to have a party. What’s your favorite kind of cake?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Chocolate it is. Anything else you want?”

  She shook her head. “Just cake.”

  “It will be fun. I’m going to invite Joel. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, if you don’t…”

  “No, he’s cute.”

  I felt a pang of jealousy. “Okay. I’ll ask if he wants to come.”

  “I can’t wait.

  After a moment I said, “Well, I better get inside before my parents wonder where I am.”

  “Good night, Eric.”

  “Good night.”

  As I crawled out, I was thinking how much I liked the way she spoke my name. I walked along the driveway back to the front of the house and went in through the front
door. My mother and father were in the living room, my mother reading Look magazine and my father in his La-Z-Boy watching The Beverly Hillbillies.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom said.

  “Hi.” I sat down on the floor next to her to watch the television. At the commercial break my mom said, “How was your day?”

  My father said, “Keep it down, the Buick commercial’s on.”

  “Sorry,” my mom said.

  “It was fine,” I said, sotto voce.

  “What did you learn at school?”

  “Nothing.”

  This is the standard reply millions of schoolkids every day give to their parents and one that no parent has ever questioned, even though this was probably one of the few times it was technically true.

  “Look at that,” my father said. “Next year’s Buick Electra. That is the future of the automobile.” He spoke like he’d just had a religious experience, which might have been the case.

  “Do you think you could cash my check tonight?” I asked my mom.

  “It’s too late. The bank’s closed. I’ll have to do it tomorrow on my lunch break. You don’t want me to just put it in your savings account?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just good to have some cash around.”

  “You’ve been such a good saver, don’t get out of the habit.”

  “You should save for one of those babies,” my father said, still ogling the Buick. “What a head-turner.”

  My mother shook her head.

  I took the check out of my pocket and gave it to my mother. “I’m gonna go,” I said.

  “Do you have homework?”

  “Uh, no. Not today.”

  I went into the kitchen and made myself a glass of Ovaltine, then headed to my bedroom. The lights were off. As I climbed under the covers, Joel, who was always asleep by eight, asked, “Where were you today?”

  “Work.”

  “Before that.”

  I hesitated. “School.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “Liars go to the devil.”