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Description
Grace shakes her voluptuous curls from the wetness that was inevitable with the beating rain outside, making her own mini-rainstorm in the warm, cozy café. The barista, a girl named Beverly whom she has never liked, gives her a death glare worthy of Satan. Grace gives her a sarcastic little wave and smiles beatifically. As Beverly’s eyes narrow, Grace saunters to the table, where her best friend in the world is sitting.

The second she pulls out a chair for herself, Mallory starts her copyright trademark: a mix of mocking and reprimanding.

“I win. Again. You have to pay up.”

Grace groans, blowing on her steaming Tazo Awake(they never get Zen or other herbals…it would be suicide with their studying hours).

“Ugh! This sucks. Fine. I must pay for tea AND pastries the next three times.”

“You wouldn’t have to if you weren’t always late,” Mallory points out with her usual calculating, annoying logic.

“We should change the rules,” Grace insists petulantly, as familiar as their five-day-a-week tea.

“Dude, we’ve had them for nearly five years.”

Five years ago, they met. It all started with tears. Mallory hates crying, and prides herself in doing it only twice a year, give or take an extra. Grace reminds her that if Mallory had never found her crying, they might’ve never been friends…

~****~

Sitting at a bus stop in Seattle, Mallory is painfully aware that she is the only person there with nothing to do.

An older woman sitting next to her is reading the newspaper. A guy with spiky fair hair and a tattoo around his wrist has headphones. A redhead girl that goes to her school is reading a book called “This Lullaby”.

Since Mallory’s form of entertainment is playing with a loose thread at the end of her sleeve, she studies the girl.

She sort of knows her as an acquaintance, someone she says “hi” and “bye” to, someone she might complaint to about a teacher. For the life of her she can’t remember the girl’s name…there are too many girls at her school with virtue names. All she knows is that it’s one of the many.

But which one? Joy? Hope? Grace? Charity? Faith? Chastity?

Miss Virtue’s hair is huge, loopy, the length a little above her chin, and the color of copper. The Shirley Temple do’ is at odds with the mature, striking and fierce face: angular features, a long, pointed(but somehow full) mouth, a curved, pointed nose, arching eyebrows, and flashing blue eyes.

What a contradiction, the hair belonging to Animal Crackers In My Soup, the face belonging to an Amazon Warrior.

Mallory doesn’t want Miss Virtue to see her staring, so she varies every minute or so between observing and string-twirling.

The seventh time she looks up, Miss Virtue’s eyes are watery. A little red flag goes up in Mallory’s head, and though she has never experienced it herself(little kid years don’t count), she knows it is mortifying to bawl in public.

The girl takes a huge, ragged breath. Others begin to stare at her. She notices, panicked, and glees, leaving behind the sound of her feet hitting the sidewalk.

Mallory jumps up and follows her at a slower pace, meeting her at one of the many Starbucks.  The girl’s head is in her hands, and she is sitting outside the café. On the right side of her is a pile of cigarette butts.

“You’re not welcome” Mallory tells herself. Despite this, she sits on the opposite side of the cigarette butts.

“I’m not even going to bother asking ‘are you ok?’ since you’re obviously not, or ‘what’s wrong?’ because obviously SOMETHING is, and those questions have always annoyed me, so…”

She peters off with her ramble, realizing that by stating this she can’t really explain why she’s sitting here in the first place…

Miss Virtue laughs weakly.

“Thanks. At least you don’t B.S. like counselors.”

“Um…you’re welcome? Look, I know this is kind of rude, since we are in some of the same classes, but what’s your name?”

“Grace.”

Mallory decides that the name fits, in some strange way.

“I know yours. You’re Mallory. You always say really interesting things in English…”

Even racking her brain, Mallory can’t recall this.

“I do?!”

“Yeah.”

Searching in her pockets, Mallory takes out a little packaged plastic thing of Kleenex and hands it to Grace, who in turn blows her nose pathetically: it sounds like an elephant farting.

“So here’s the thing: my parents are divorced.”

Mallory knows a lot of kids whose parents are divorced. Sometimes she wonders why hers aren’t, since they never seem to talk to each other. Sometimes she doesn’t know why people even bother marrying, if they know the statistic: nearly one out of three marriages end in divorce(discovered my Mallory as a result of her boredom in a waiting room).

“But Dad stayed over yesterday. In her BEDROOM. It just makes me sick, you know?”

Nodding, Mallory tugs at the end of her silvery blonde hair.

“But not, it gets even worse. Because then she’s cruel and hypocritical and- it’s just bad. She finds this thing full of birth control pills in my room and calls me a whore. A whore. Can you believe that? After sleeping with a guy that she DIVORCED- God.”

The redhead girl shakes her head, curls bobbing.

“If she paid any attention at all… I TOLD her I got them for acne. The doctor told her this, too. If she stopped being all ‘poor little me’,  she’d remember things about HER ONLY DAUGHTER.”

“I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to say..”

“Hey, no worries. At least you listened. No one else seems to give a damn,” she says firmly, as if daring anyone to contradict her sure claim. “But they sure like pretending to…”

Biting her lip, Mallory searches her pocket for money…Nope. Just enough for bus fare.

Grace catches on to Mallory gazing wistfully through the window at the steam and frappucinos and cappuccinos left on the counters to satisfy a person’s sweet tooth or their need for caffeine.

“I’ve got enough money. Let’s go.”

And so it began…

~****~

Mallory takes a cautionary sip, and says, “Okay, so personally I think I get the most points for this day, because it was just really embarrassing-”

“LEE JUMPED OUT THE WINDOW!” Grace blurts out, then promptly bites her lip. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. It just sort of came out…”

Wide-eyed, Mallory asks, “Lee? As in your current boyfriend-of-the-moment Lee? The one I suggested you date because I wanted you to go for an art-type, for once?”

“Yes, that Lee.”

“Whoa. You might get more points after all.”

The two of them put their hands together in their own little, invisible-to-the-naked-eye circle. Taking their fingers out, they commence to their own advanced version on “rock, paper, scissors”: “one-finger, two-fingers, three-fingers, four-fingers”.

Grace wins.

“So we’re taking a test in science, right? Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lee go up to sharpen a pencil, think nothing of it.
I hear the window open and I’m like, ‘What? It’s freezing,’, because even though it’s April, it’s the Pacific Northwest. It’s only the rare days when it’s NOT freezing, or cool at least.
Everyone else is all buried in their tests, but I’m completely distracted, watching him. Well, he takes his shirt off too, though I never did figure out why…that helped.”

“Nice,” says Mallory with an eye roll of disdain.

“Shut up. We’re not all as immune to our hormones as you are, Mal.”

“I am NOT,” she proclaims indignantly, “ ‘immune to my hormones’.”

“Prude.”

“Slut.”

“You haven’t even dated anyone since Patrick.”

“So? No one’s caught my eye. No one’s good enough.”

“Prude.”

“I am NOT!”

“Please. They don’t have to be Prince Charming. Find someone decent in personality but hot. Then have plain, hot-blooded sex.”

“GRACE! For Pete’s sake! Keep your voice down!” Mallory hisses through her teeth.

“What? I’m not ashamed,” says Grace, tipping her head back, arms thrown out.

This “not ashamed” is what has gotten her in trouble. It’s always struck Mallory as funny(not ha-ha funny but life funny) that with her delicate, bruise-able features, she appears to be the friend that’d be more volatile…but Grace, Grace with her Amazon Warrior face, despite her brazenness, gets hurt easily. Yes, ironically Grace is the vulnerable one.

“Anyway. Back to it…He announces loudly, ‘People, I have a confession to make’. Now, of course, everyone is staring. Ms. Collingwood goes all pale, like she doesn’t remember this being covered in the teacher hand-book. Lee’s all bemused by this…
So he says, ‘Guess what? I. Have. No. Idea. Who. I. Am. Oh, and Grace? I love you, and see you in my wettest, wildest dreams…”

“He did not!”

“Well. He did say he loved me. Not the ‘wettest, wildest dreams’ bit. But he was thinking it. I could just tell.”

‘”Riiight.”

“And he jumps, well, more like SLIDES, out the window. So then everyone/s freaking out, and I’m hyperventilating, because I think he’s going to DIE. It was a second-story window, Mal.”
But he doesn’t. Just gets a sprained wrist, the idiot. And do you know how he answered when people asked why on earth did he do it?”

“Indulge me,” requests Mallory, hooked.

“ ‘It just seemed like the right thing to do.’ God. Crazy shit, huh?”

“Certifiable. But you’re totally still in looooove…”

“Yup.”

Shimmying her shoulders absentmindedly to the current Jack Johnson playing, Grace says, “Okay, your turn now.”

“It’s an Evil Hag From Hell Who Goes To My School story.”

“Oh, this is gonna be terrible. I can tell.”

“Gee, I wonder how? Now, I’m in P.E., and, of course, I forget my gym shorts. So I’m rummaging through my bag, chanting, ‘please, please be in here, please pleeeease’ because they unfairly take down your grade if you don’t have uniform regalia on for gym. Right now I’m just going to say that, for the record, my locker is right next to the door. So I was totally caught unawares…”

“Oh my GOD.”

“…when Cammie Dabbers grabs my arm and says, ‘Come on, you’ll be late! I have an extra pair,’ grabs my wrist, has one of her henchman open the door, and pushes me out. I did not know what was happening until I was actually standing right there in my tragically not-short-enough-to-cover-my-lack-of-shorts t-shirt. Just me and my yellow lace panties, for the world to see.”

“I’ll kill her for you.”

“Wait, wait…it gets better. Because not only is my entire gym class there, but the football team is all lined up for the exit, as they had an out-of-district game and needed to get on the bus…Wolf whistles and laughter galore. I’m completely red and run back to the locker room, where she is waiting there with her high ponytail, putting on lip gloss. She doesn’t give me another glance and walks out the door, fully dressed and smug.”

“You are so getting a pumpkin scone.”

“But we always wait for-”

“You NEED a pumpkin scone.”

“They’re highway robbery, Gra-”

“I repeat: you NEED a pumpkin scone.”

Mallory taps her fingers on the table, contemplating how she tells Grace her news, while her NEEDED pumpkin scone is being acquired.

Breaking off a piece of her NEEDED pumpkin scone and giving it to Grace, she says, “There’s more.”

Grace practically falls off her chair.

“There’s MORE?!”

“Yes, there’s more. But it’s not bad. It really has nothing to do with our high school experiences. Maybe technically. But not REALLY.”

“What?!”

Skipping the mental preparation, Mallory just spits it out.

“I got accepted to Sarah Lawrence.”

The world spins. Coffee is poured. Someone grabs an Odwalla juice and one of their outrageously overpriced fruit salads.

“Sarah Lawrence,” croaks Grace. “Sarah Lawrence as in the Sarah Lawrence on the other side of the world.”

“The other side of the country,” Mallory corrects.

“Same difference.”

“Grace, come on…”

“I will NOT come on. YOU come on. What happened to UW? What happened to going to the same college since our parents chose different private high schools? What happened to our PLANS, damn it! We had plans!”

“I don’t want to live here forever. And it’s not that great of a school.”

“I don’t want to live here forever either! But-but-but-” she sputters out.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love Seattle. But there’s more of the world out there.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Okay, fine! You’re leaving me. I didn’t really want to be within a car’s ride away from my parents, not that they’ll come down that often anyway, but I applied because I thought. We had. Plans.”

“Look, it’s not like I didn’t work really hard for this! It’s not like I didn’t bust my ass studying and doing everything so I could get a scholarship, because my money barely covers food! I really, really want to go there! Please be happy for me. You don’t have to go to UW, either. I mean, you can if you want, but there ARE other fucking schools out there…”

Mallory rarely swears, so when she does, it makes more of an impact. Grace, on the other hand, swears like it’s the most normal thing in the world…she says profanities like some people say “milk” or “run” or “book”.

“Yeah, I’m happy. I am. But I’m alone. Again. So happy THIS,” she says, then decides against flipping her the bird, since that might be going a bit to far, so Mallory looks confused as to what she means.

Trying for a dramatic exit, Grace sweeps up her backpack and tea. The scalding water jumps out as she stomps to the door, not helping her already foul mood.

“Damn it,” she mutters.

~****~

Grace has been trying to hail a cab for so long that her tea has finally cooled. She gulps it down, the warm liquid water falling down her throat.

Finally a taxi pulls up. The driver is Hispanic. Grace is glad she finally speaks SOMEONE’S language, greets him in Spanish, which he delights in, then tells him her address in English.

“Mind if I smoke?” she asks in Spanish

“Thank God,” he replies, also in Spanish. “No one ever asks me that. I have been needing a smoke ALL DAY. I’m not supposed to smoke in here, though. Be secretive.”

She nods and lights a cigarette, cupping it in her hand.

“Want one?”

He nods. She lights another one, hands it to him, and inhales hers. Exhale. Inhale.

Mostly she’s quit, but she always keeps a pack in her purse, just in case of emergencies. This, clearly, is an emergency.

“And I was doing so well, too,” she thinks to herself. “Three months and not a single ciggy. Oh well.”

“Bad day?” he asks, taking a drag of his.

“You have no idea.”

~****~

“Who is it?” calls out Grace’s mother, Rebecca, when she comes in the door.

“Who else would it be?” she asks back, extinguished cigarette in hand.

“Oh, it’s you, darling.”

“The one and only.”

“Could you zip the back of this dress? I just went shopping today. It was fabulous. Oh, and you need to put on some of that skin stuff I got you. Your zits really are a terror.”

Grace scowls.

“Sure I will!” she calls back in a chipper voice.

She touches her forehead self-consciously. They’re getting better. And they’ve faded, you can’t even see them when she wears cover-up.

Or so she thought.

Grace solves the problem of the used cig by throwing in it in the huge, beautifully decorated, blue, huge ceramic pot Rebecca “bought for a fortune” and some stupid auction or other. Satisfactorily, she smushes it with her heel, smearing the black crap all over the bottom of the pot.

~****~

“Hey…Are you there?
I guess not. That’s probably why I’m getting your voice mail.
Or maybe you’re just ignoring me.
Look, please don’t be mad. You can go to whatever college you want. You know that. If you want to go to UW, go to UW. If you want to go somewhere else, go somewhere else.
I know we had plans…But Grace? I didn’t think about anyone else when I chose to go there. I mean, it wasn’t  a sure deal, obviously, but I wanted to go so bad I sort of made it a sure deal, you know?
But I think that’s what people forget when they choose to go to college or wherever they go…that’s it’s their choice. They have to ignore their parents and their friends and their school counselors and everybody else because it’s not about everybody else: it’s about THEM.
And it’s about ME. And-
BEEEEP.”

“Stupid time limit thing. Okay, where was I…
Oh, that’s just great! I can’t remember!
Right.
And it’s about YOU.
You, Grace.
Please think about it.
Please don’t ignore me.
I’m still your best friend.
We’ll always be best friends. It doesn’t matter where we are.
Okay, bye.
*click*”

Snapping her cell shut, Grace sighs and pops open her laptop.

Flashes of their friendship come:

Jumping into the lake, cooled after the summer heat, laughing. Swimming far from the dock, submerging under every few minutes. Floating on their backs and looking at the sky. Coconut ice cream bars.

“Dirty Dancing” and Ben & Jerry’s after all of Grace’s numerous break-ups, with Mal always there to point out all of The Ex’s flaws.

Trespassing over the gate to the park at night to share a flask and stories.

Dancing when there was no music playing.

Study hours. “Magellan, Velocity, Diameter, SAT Words”. Chips and salsa, occasionally staining their notes.

She searches a place she’s read about for its wide flatness, hills, and adobe homes. The Pueblos and their old civilization, still there after all this time. Starry nights. Art Studies. Archeological studies. New Mexico in all its beauty…

She fills out the form.

Lingers over the keys, what to write for the essay?

“If there is ever a person that changes your life, it is your best friend. This is how my best friend changed mine…”

Description
Grace shakes her voluptuous curls from the wetness that was inevitable with the beating rain outside, making her own mini-rainstorm in the warm, cozy café. The barista, a girl named Beverly whom she has never liked, gives her a death glare worthy of Satan. Grace gives her a sarcastic little wave and smiles beatifically. As Beverly’s eyes narrow, Grace saunters to the table, where her best friend in the world is sitting.

The second she pulls out a chair for herself, Mallory starts her copyright trademark: a mix of mocking and reprimanding.

“I win. Again. You have to pay up.”

Grace groans, blowing on her steaming Tazo Awake(they never get Zen or other herbals…it would be suicide with their studying hours).

“Ugh! This sucks. Fine. I must pay for tea AND pastries the next three times.”

“You wouldn’t have to if you weren’t always late,” Mallory points out with her usual calculating, annoying logic.

“We should change the rules,” Grace insists petulantly, as familiar as their five-day-a-week tea.

“Dude, we’ve had them for nearly five years.”

Five years ago, they met. It all started with tears. Mallory hates crying, and prides herself in doing it only twice a year, give or take an extra. Grace reminds her that if Mallory had never found her crying, they might’ve never been friends…

~****~

Sitting at a bus stop in Seattle, Mallory is painfully aware that she is the only person there with nothing to do.

An older woman sitting next to her is reading the newspaper. A guy with spiky fair hair and a tattoo around his wrist has headphones. A redhead girl that goes to her school is reading a book called “This Lullaby”.

Since Mallory’s form of entertainment is playing with a loose thread at the end of her sleeve, she studies the girl.

She sort of knows her as an acquaintance, someone she says “hi” and “bye” to, someone she might complaint to about a teacher. For the life of her she can’t remember the girl’s name…there are too many girls at her school with virtue names. All she knows is that it’s one of the many.

But which one? Joy? Hope? Grace? Charity? Faith? Chastity?

Miss Virtue’s hair is huge, loopy, the length a little above her chin, and the color of copper. The Shirley Temple do’ is at odds with the mature, striking and fierce face: angular features, a long, pointed(but somehow full) mouth, a curved, pointed nose, arching eyebrows, and flashing blue eyes.

What a contradiction, the hair belonging to Animal Crackers In My Soup, the face belonging to an Amazon Warrior.

Mallory doesn’t want Miss Virtue to see her staring, so she varies every minute or so between observing and string-twirling.

The seventh time she looks up, Miss Virtue’s eyes are watery. A little red flag goes up in Mallory’s head, and though she has never experienced it herself(little kid years don’t count), she knows it is mortifying to bawl in public.

The girl takes a huge, ragged breath. Others begin to stare at her. She notices, panicked, and glees, leaving behind the sound of her feet hitting the sidewalk.

Mallory jumps up and follows her at a slower pace, meeting her at one of the many Starbucks.  The girl’s head is in her hands, and she is sitting outside the café. On the right side of her is a pile of cigarette butts.

“You’re not welcome” Mallory tells herself. Despite this, she sits on the opposite side of the cigarette butts.

“I’m not even going to bother asking ‘are you ok?’ since you’re obviously not, or ‘what’s wrong?’ because obviously SOMETHING is, and those questions have always annoyed me, so…”

She peters off with her ramble, realizing that by stating this she can’t really explain why she’s sitting here in the first place…

Miss Virtue laughs weakly.

“Thanks. At least you don’t B.S. like counselors.”

“Um…you’re welcome? Look, I know this is kind of rude, since we are in some of the same classes, but what’s your name?”

“Grace.”

Mallory decides that the name fits, in some strange way.

“I know yours. You’re Mallory. You always say really interesting things in English…”

Even racking her brain, Mallory can’t recall this.

“I do?!”

“Yeah.”

Searching in her pockets, Mallory takes out a little packaged plastic thing of Kleenex and hands it to Grace, who in turn blows her nose pathetically: it sounds like an elephant farting.

“So here’s the thing: my parents are divorced.”

Mallory knows a lot of kids whose parents are divorced. Sometimes she wonders why hers aren’t, since they never seem to talk to each other. Sometimes she doesn’t know why people even bother marrying, if they know the statistic: nearly one out of three marriages end in divorce(discovered my Mallory as a result of her boredom in a waiting room).

“But Dad stayed over yesterday. In her BEDROOM. It just makes me sick, you know?”

Nodding, Mallory tugs at the end of her silvery blonde hair.

“But not, it gets even worse. Because then she’s cruel and hypocritical and- it’s just bad. She finds this thing full of birth control pills in my room and calls me a whore. A whore. Can you believe that? After sleeping with a guy that she DIVORCED- God.”

The redhead girl shakes her head, curls bobbing.

“If she paid any attention at all… I TOLD her I got them for acne. The doctor told her this, too. If she stopped being all ‘poor little me’,  she’d remember things about HER ONLY DAUGHTER.”

“I’m sorry. I really don’t know what to say..”

“Hey, no worries. At least you listened. No one else seems to give a damn,” she says firmly, as if daring anyone to contradict her sure claim. “But they sure like pretending to…”

Biting her lip, Mallory searches her pocket for money…Nope. Just enough for bus fare.

Grace catches on to Mallory gazing wistfully through the window at the steam and frappucinos and cappuccinos left on the counters to satisfy a person’s sweet tooth or their need for caffeine.

“I’ve got enough money. Let’s go.”

And so it began…

~****~

Mallory takes a cautionary sip, and says, “Okay, so personally I think I get the most points for this day, because it was just really embarrassing-”

“LEE JUMPED OUT THE WINDOW!” Grace blurts out, then promptly bites her lip. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. It just sort of came out…”

Wide-eyed, Mallory asks, “Lee? As in your current boyfriend-of-the-moment Lee? The one I suggested you date because I wanted you to go for an art-type, for once?”

“Yes, that Lee.”

“Whoa. You might get more points after all.”

The two of them put their hands together in their own little, invisible-to-the-naked-eye circle. Taking their fingers out, they commence to their own advanced version on “rock, paper, scissors”: “one-finger, two-fingers, three-fingers, four-fingers”.

Grace wins.

“So we’re taking a test in science, right? Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lee go up to sharpen a pencil, think nothing of it.
I hear the window open and I’m like, ‘What? It’s freezing,’, because even though it’s April, it’s the Pacific Northwest. It’s only the rare days when it’s NOT freezing, or cool at least.
Everyone else is all buried in their tests, but I’m completely distracted, watching him. Well, he takes his shirt off too, though I never did figure out why…that helped.”

“Nice,” says Mallory with an eye roll of disdain.

“Shut up. We’re not all as immune to our hormones as you are, Mal.”

“I am NOT,” she proclaims indignantly, “ ‘immune to my hormones’.”

“Prude.”

“Slut.”

“You haven’t even dated anyone since Patrick.”

“So? No one’s caught my eye. No one’s good enough.”

“Prude.”

“I am NOT!”

“Please. They don’t have to be Prince Charming. Find someone decent in personality but hot. Then have plain, hot-blooded sex.”

“GRACE! For Pete’s sake! Keep your voice down!” Mallory hisses through her teeth.

“What? I’m not ashamed,” says Grace, tipping her head back, arms thrown out.

This “not ashamed” is what has gotten her in trouble. It’s always struck Mallory as funny(not ha-ha funny but life funny) that with her delicate, bruise-able features, she appears to be the friend that’d be more volatile…but Grace, Grace with her Amazon Warrior face, despite her brazenness, gets hurt easily. Yes, ironically Grace is the vulnerable one.

“Anyway. Back to it…He announces loudly, ‘People, I have a confession to make’. Now, of course, everyone is staring. Ms. Collingwood goes all pale, like she doesn’t remember this being covered in the teacher hand-book. Lee’s all bemused by this…
So he says, ‘Guess what? I. Have. No. Idea. Who. I. Am. Oh, and Grace? I love you, and see you in my wettest, wildest dreams…”

“He did not!”

“Well. He did say he loved me. Not the ‘wettest, wildest dreams’ bit. But he was thinking it. I could just tell.”

‘”Riiight.”

“And he jumps, well, more like SLIDES, out the window. So then everyone/s freaking out, and I’m hyperventilating, because I think he’s going to DIE. It was a second-story window, Mal.”
But he doesn’t. Just gets a sprained wrist, the idiot. And do you know how he answered when people asked why on earth did he do it?”

“Indulge me,” requests Mallory, hooked.

“ ‘It just seemed like the right thing to do.’ God. Crazy shit, huh?”

“Certifiable. But you’re totally still in looooove…”

“Yup.”

Shimmying her shoulders absentmindedly to the current Jack Johnson playing, Grace says, “Okay, your turn now.”

“It’s an Evil Hag From Hell Who Goes To My School story.”

“Oh, this is gonna be terrible. I can tell.”

“Gee, I wonder how? Now, I’m in P.E., and, of course, I forget my gym shorts. So I’m rummaging through my bag, chanting, ‘please, please be in here, please pleeeease’ because they unfairly take down your grade if you don’t have uniform regalia on for gym. Right now I’m just going to say that, for the record, my locker is right next to the door. So I was totally caught unawares…”

“Oh my GOD.”

“…when Cammie Dabbers grabs my arm and says, ‘Come on, you’ll be late! I have an extra pair,’ grabs my wrist, has one of her henchman open the door, and pushes me out. I did not know what was happening until I was actually standing right there in my tragically not-short-enough-to-cover-my-lack-of-shorts t-shirt. Just me and my yellow lace panties, for the world to see.”

“I’ll kill her for you.”

“Wait, wait…it gets better. Because not only is my entire gym class there, but the football team is all lined up for the exit, as they had an out-of-district game and needed to get on the bus…Wolf whistles and laughter galore. I’m completely red and run back to the locker room, where she is waiting there with her high ponytail, putting on lip gloss. She doesn’t give me another glance and walks out the door, fully dressed and smug.”

“You are so getting a pumpkin scone.”

“But we always wait for-”

“You NEED a pumpkin scone.”

“They’re highway robbery, Gra-”

“I repeat: you NEED a pumpkin scone.”

Mallory taps her fingers on the table, contemplating how she tells Grace her news, while her NEEDED pumpkin scone is being acquired.

Breaking off a piece of her NEEDED pumpkin scone and giving it to Grace, she says, “There’s more.”

Grace practically falls off her chair.

“There’s MORE?!”

“Yes, there’s more. But it’s not bad. It really has nothing to do with our high school experiences. Maybe technically. But not REALLY.”

“What?!”

Skipping the mental preparation, Mallory just spits it out.

“I got accepted to Sarah Lawrence.”

The world spins. Coffee is poured. Someone grabs an Odwalla juice and one of their outrageously overpriced fruit salads.

“Sarah Lawrence,” croaks Grace. “Sarah Lawrence as in the Sarah Lawrence on the other side of the world.”

“The other side of the country,” Mallory corrects.

“Same difference.”

“Grace, come on…”

“I will NOT come on. YOU come on. What happened to UW? What happened to going to the same college since our parents chose different private high schools? What happened to our PLANS, damn it! We had plans!”

“I don’t want to live here forever. And it’s not that great of a school.”

“I don’t want to live here forever either! But-but-but-” she sputters out.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love Seattle. But there’s more of the world out there.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Okay, fine! You’re leaving me. I didn’t really want to be within a car’s ride away from my parents, not that they’ll come down that often anyway, but I applied because I thought. We had. Plans.”

“Look, it’s not like I didn’t work really hard for this! It’s not like I didn’t bust my ass studying and doing everything so I could get a scholarship, because my money barely covers food! I really, really want to go there! Please be happy for me. You don’t have to go to UW, either. I mean, you can if you want, but there ARE other fucking schools out there…”

Mallory rarely swears, so when she does, it makes more of an impact. Grace, on the other hand, swears like it’s the most normal thing in the world…she says profanities like some people say “milk” or “run” or “book”.

“Yeah, I’m happy. I am. But I’m alone. Again. So happy THIS,” she says, then decides against flipping her the bird, since that might be going a bit to far, so Mallory looks confused as to what she means.

Trying for a dramatic exit, Grace sweeps up her backpack and tea. The scalding water jumps out as she stomps to the door, not helping her already foul mood.

“Damn it,” she mutters.

~****~

Grace has been trying to hail a cab for so long that her tea has finally cooled. She gulps it down, the warm liquid water falling down her throat.

Finally a taxi pulls up. The driver is Hispanic. Grace is glad she finally speaks SOMEONE’S language, greets him in Spanish, which he delights in, then tells him her address in English.

“Mind if I smoke?” she asks in Spanish

“Thank God,” he replies, also in Spanish. “No one ever asks me that. I have been needing a smoke ALL DAY. I’m not supposed to smoke in here, though. Be secretive.”

She nods and lights a cigarette, cupping it in her hand.

“Want one?”

He nods. She lights another one, hands it to him, and inhales hers. Exhale. Inhale.

Mostly she’s quit, but she always keeps a pack in her purse, just in case of emergencies. This, clearly, is an emergency.

“And I was doing so well, too,” she thinks to herself. “Three months and not a single ciggy. Oh well.”

“Bad day?” he asks, taking a drag of his.

“You have no idea.”

~****~

“Who is it?” calls out Grace’s mother, Rebecca, when she comes in the door.

“Who else would it be?” she asks back, extinguished cigarette in hand.

“Oh, it’s you, darling.”

“The one and only.”

“Could you zip the back of this dress? I just went shopping today. It was fabulous. Oh, and you need to put on some of that skin stuff I got you. Your zits really are a terror.”

Grace scowls.

“Sure I will!” she calls back in a chipper voice.

She touches her forehead self-consciously. They’re getting better. And they’ve faded, you can’t even see them when she wears cover-up.

Or so she thought.

Grace solves the problem of the used cig by throwing in it in the huge, beautifully decorated, blue, huge ceramic pot Rebecca “bought for a fortune” and some stupid auction or other. Satisfactorily, she smushes it with her heel, smearing the black crap all over the bottom of the pot.

~****~

“Hey…Are you there?
I guess not. That’s probably why I’m getting your voice mail.
Or maybe you’re just ignoring me.
Look, please don’t be mad. You can go to whatever college you want. You know that. If you want to go to UW, go to UW. If you want to go somewhere else, go somewhere else.
I know we had plans…But Grace? I didn’t think about anyone else when I chose to go there. I mean, it wasn’t  a sure deal, obviously, but I wanted to go so bad I sort of made it a sure deal, you know?
But I think that’s what people forget when they choose to go to college or wherever they go…that’s it’s their choice. They have to ignore their parents and their friends and their school counselors and everybody else because it’s not about everybody else: it’s about THEM.
And it’s about ME. And-
BEEEEP.”

“Stupid time limit thing. Okay, where was I…
Oh, that’s just great! I can’t remember!
Right.
And it’s about YOU.
You, Grace.
Please think about it.
Please don’t ignore me.
I’m still your best friend.
We’ll always be best friends. It doesn’t matter where we are.
Okay, bye.
*click*”

Snapping her cell shut, Grace sighs and pops open her laptop.

Flashes of their friendship come:

Jumping into the lake, cooled after the summer heat, laughing. Swimming far from the dock, submerging under every few minutes. Floating on their backs and looking at the sky. Coconut ice cream bars.

“Dirty Dancing” and Ben & Jerry’s after all of Grace’s numerous break-ups, with Mal always there to point out all of The Ex’s flaws.

Trespassing over the gate to the park at night to share a flask and stories.

Dancing when there was no music playing.

Study hours. “Magellan, Velocity, Diameter, SAT Words”. Chips and salsa, occasionally staining their notes.

She searches a place she’s read about for its wide flatness, hills, and adobe homes. The Pueblos and their old civilization, still there after all this time. Starry nights. Art Studies. Archeological studies. New Mexico in all its beauty…

She fills out the form.

Lingers over the keys, what to write for the essay?

“If there is ever a person that changes your life, it is your best friend. This is how my best friend changed mine…”