Chapter Fourteen. Grace
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GRACE
I don’t want to be here.
“Here” is the sandy little stretch of beach where Levi Miller hosts a weenie roast every year for his birthday, ever since we were kids, on the section of his father’s dairy farm that slopes down to meet the Chesapeake.
Even though it’s near eighty degrees, he and a bunch of the other fellas built a bonfire for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.
A cooler full of Cokes sits on the tailgate of somebody’s pickup.
Most of our class is here, plus some tagalong brothers and sisters.
The boys are tossing a football around and shoving hot dogs slathered with Heinz into their mouths.
The girls are building a sandcastle and sunbathing in bikinis so revealing, Dad would be scandalized.
Those girls are asking for trouble, he’d say. Their parents ought to be ashamed. I’d never let you out of the house dressed like that.
I’m wearing a red-and-white-striped T-shirt and a knee-length red skirt, with my blond hair pulled into a ponytail, white Keds on my feet, and red lipstick on my mouth. I look beautiful (especially with sunglasses covering my tired eyes) and I know it.
It’s not enough. Not without Stan on my arm.
Usually, the girls shout my name and make space on their blanket (or in their booth at the diner or their table in the lunchroom).
Today, when I dropped my bicycle in the grass and made my way down to the beach, no one even waved.
Sure were a lot of whispers, though. Especially from the picnic blanket where Barb and Kitty and Jeanne were posing like pinup girls.
Jeanne and I sat next to each other in calculus last year, the only two girls in the class.
Neither of our dads sees the point in college, though.
When I meet her eyes, she raises her hand to wave, but Barb elbows her in the ribs, and she drops her hand like a hot potato.
Coward. I stuck up for her every time Barb called her a drip for playing the French horn.
Kitty won’t even look at me. She’s nicer than Barb and twice as pretty, but she follows her around like a shadow.
Orders have clearly been given: I’m being shunned. I can almost hear the whispers.
High-and-mighty Grace has lost her marbles—and her man!
I can’t blame them. (I do blame them.) That must be how it seemed.
I wish Barb or Kitty cared if I was all right, but the truth is, our friendship has never been like that.
Barb’s dad owns the nicest restaurant in town.
Her Pop Pop was the mayor when we were kids.
She never paid any attention to scrawny me with my creepy dad and falling-down house. Not till I started going with Stanley.
And then, oh, I lorded being Stanley Grotowski’s girlfriend over her.
Stan gave me his letter jacket because I was cold and told me I could keep it.
Stan gave me his class ring and asked me to wait for him!
Look, I got another letter from Stan. Giggling, I’d let you read it, but it’s private.
I squealed about my brave soldier. When he came back, I crowed about never having to worry about finding a date on Friday night. I’m a lucky duck, aren’t I?
I never share the things I have to do to keep him.
It’s really no wonder that Barb hates me.
I grab a marshmallow and a stick and stalk toward the bonfire, ignoring the whispers.
“Harrow!” someone shouts, what feels like hours later.
I glance up hopefully, but he isn’t talking to me. Cooper has arrived with Rose. She stumbles in her ridiculous wedge heels and beams up at him when he steadies her on the rocky sand.
“Rose!” Barb and Kitty shriek, scrambling to stake their claim on the new girl.
I glower. Fortunes rise and fall awfully fast around here.
Barb tilts her head close to Rose’s and whispers something.
Rose’s big blue eyes search the beach and land on me. I must look pathetic, standing here by myself, on my third marshmallow, friendless.
“Oh, there she is!” She waves and makes a beeline right for me. “Grace! Hi!”
Barb catches her elbow. “I’m surprised you’d want anything to do with her, after how she ruined your party.
She was drunk as a skunk! What a hypocrite.
She always acts like she’s better than everybody else.
” She pitches her reedy voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Stanley’s not here. I bet he called it quits.
About time, I say. She was never good enough for him. ”
I clutch the pointed stick in my hand, wishing I could poke her eyes out.
Rose blinks at her. “I don’t know what you mean. Stanley’s positively devoted to Grace. That’s plain to anybody. But she’s so clever, I don’t wonder that she finds Greeley a little stultifying. Especially if all her friends are two-faced snakes like you.”
I gasp.
Barb flushes as red as one of Ma’s prize tomatoes.
One of the guys hoots, “She told you!”
Barb is famous for her sharp tongue. Hardly anybody goes against her except me, and I always had the ace (Stanley) in my pocket. The crowd enjoys seeing the pretty new girl serve it right back. Jeanne’s laugh is a loud goosey honk.
I can’t believe Rose stood up for me like that.
She saunters over and hooks her arm through mine. “Ooh, marshmallows!”
I tip the pointed stick in my hand toward her, and she plucks the marshmallow off and pops it into her mouth. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I say fervently. “I didn’t deserve that after—”
“Don’t mention it.” Rose glances around. “Really, don’t. I think that pug-faced shrew is trying to eavesdrop.”
It’s the most I’ve ever liked her.
Back by the pickup truck, Cooper is talking with Levi and the other guys. There’s a lot of backslaps and wow-ee whistles about how he’s landed himself a real little spitfire. And she’s a looker, too!
“So, you and my brother, huh? Is this a date?”
Rose smiles coyly. “We’ll see.”
“If you break his heart—” I glare at her.
“Suppose he breaks mine?” Rose picks her way carefully over the pebbly sand down to the water. “I’ve never had a steady before … Don’t look so surprised!”
I am surprised. “I just assumed—”
“That boarding school girls are fast?” She says it without any rancor as she bends and unbuckles her wedges. “I’ve kissed a few boys, but they were all duds. Nothing serious. I gather it’s the same with Coop?”
“He’s a late bloomer, I guess.” He took Polly Vaughn to Homecoming last year. She clearly hoped it would turn into something more, but he never seemed terribly interested. Honestly, I wondered if it was just to get everybody off his back.
Dad wasn’t the only one who thought Cooper was soft.
The boys used to call him a sissy and worse.
Back in fifth grade, Billy Patterson called him a fairy, so I slugged Billy and made his nose bleed and ruined his good church clothes.
Dad gave me a beating for it (fighting at church was nasty behavior for a girl) but Billy never bothered Cooper again.
I kind of forgot about it till two summers ago, when I biked over to Levi’s to bring Cooper the lunch he’d forgotten.
I surprised him and Levi in the barn. There was a lot of shuffling up in the hayloft and some fumbling with trousers as they came down the ladder, and—well, it was clear I’d interrupted something.
We never talked about it. A week later, Levi started seeing Harriet, and now they’re talking about getting engaged. So I don’t know what to think.
Cooper is the best brother I could imagine. But if he is a homosexual, the world will be harder for him. If Dad found out—
I wonder if that’s why Cooper has money stashed away in his baseball glove.
In case we both need to get out of town.
Rose gasps at the cold as she wades into the water.
“Don’t be a baby,” I tease, toeing off my Keds.
“Grotowski!” My stomach plummets. I glance back at the beach. Stanley is carrying a six-pack of beer over to the pickup truck, wearing only swimming trunks. He’s stayed fit after his army service, I’ll give him that. He turns a lot of girls’ heads as he struts past.
I have to apologize. I square my shoulders.
Rose puts her dimpled, sun-warmed hand on my arm. “Don’t. Let him come to you.”
She doesn’t understand. She’s not from here; she can’t fathom how much of my social capital comes from being Stanley Grotowski’s girl. Rose is worldly in some ways, and real sheltered in others. But she didn’t have to stick up for me with Barb. So I try not to snap at her.
“He won’t. He’ll flirt with other girls.” He’ll become the life of the party, even though it’s a party for my class. He’ll want to show me how easily I can be replaced by some other girl.
“Let him.” Rose lowers her voice. “We need to talk.”
A group of girls, including that jealous cow Barb and her little sister Lottie, have gathered around Stan.
He flexes his biceps like Popeye the Sailor Man.
Lottie squeezes it, and her inane giggle rings out across the beach.
Lottie is only fourteen, but a known flirt. I should go and stake my claim.
But if I do, isn’t that as good as saying sorry? I’m not sorry.
I join Rose in the water. (It really is cold.) “What do you want to talk about?”
No one else is around, but Rose lowers her voice to a whisper anyhow. I have to step closer to hear her. She smells like rose water and baby powder.
“We need to talk about our ghost.”