Gracie (5 page)

In the distance, we heard the bell for the next class. “I can't miss bio again,” she said, picking up her books to go.

“I can,” I said, sitting on the grass as Jena headed back to the school building. Skipping class had become one of my favorite pastimes. Besides, I wanted to think about Kyle and our date that night.

Getting Mom and Dad to agree to let me go wasn't going to be easy. Dad never spoke well of Kyle as a player. He thought he was a glory hog, not a team player, which was true—and I was pretty sure Dad wouldn't want me going out with him. But I had learned strategy from playing soccer. If I couldn't get directly past a player, I could try to get around him.

That night, to everyone's surprise, we found out that Mom had done the unthinkable. She'd cleaned out Johnny's room, packed away his trophies, plaques, photos, and posters. She'd stripped his bed and emptied his closets and dressers. “We need the space. It's been months,” she told Dad with a little crack of sorrow in her voice. “I knew if I asked, you'd never say okay.”

She'd been right about that. He just turned around and went into his room, slamming the door angrily behind him.

I understood exactly how he felt. I couldn't believe she'd done it, either. It was Johnny's room! Johnny was still part of our family! She couldn't take his room away!

Daniel and Mike immediately began squabbling over who would get the room. Would they ever stop being such little monsters?

I went back to my room and shut the door, locking it, wanting to block out my whole family. I turned the radio on high so I wouldn't even have to hear them. Pulling open my top drawer I took out some Saltines and
fed them to Johnny's hawk for a treat. Maybe it was my way of saying sorry to Johnny about his room.

I let the hawk out of the cage and stroked the top of his soft head lightly with my fingertips. I had a secret I would never tell anyone because they would think I was insane: I liked to think that Johnny's soul had gone into this hawk. Sometimes the hawk looked at me with his deep yellow eyes and I was sure it was true. Whether it was true or not, it made me happy to think it.

From down the hall, I heard Mom and Dad arguing. Their bedroom door slammed. Dad's heavy footsteps stomped down the stairs. That would make my exit strategy more complicated.

It was almost seven and I couldn't wait to get out of here. I decided not to ask my parents for permission to go out with Kyle, in case they said no. I was going, no matter what, so it would be easier if I just didn't ask. That way they couldn't say I had disobeyed them. I'd say I didn't know it was such a big deal. That would be a lie, of course, but I didn't care, really.

Finally, I heard a horn honk outside. It was Kyle in his souped-up GTO convertible, its engine revving. So cool! I grabbed my jacket and bag, turned off the radio, and stuck my head out into the hall. No one was there, so I sneaked down the stairs.

Peering over the banister, I saw Dad in the den watching sports on TV. I'd have to get through the hall right past him, but when he was involved in a game, he tuned everything else out. I hoped he was deep enough into it to be in that zoned-out sports haze. Since Johnny died
he'd become even more oblivious to everything around him than even in the past, so my chances were good. As long as he hadn't heard Kyle honk or noticed him revving his engine outside, I might make it.

Barely breathing, I sort of glided to the front door. Dad didn't look up. I winced as I unlatched the front lock.
Was it always so loud?
I slipped out and pulled the door shut behind me. The closing click seemed to bang like thunder.

I waited a moment—and then finally exhaled. No one was following me out. I'd made it.

Kyle was at the curb, grinning.

As I'd planned, I pulled off the big shirt I had on over the tight tee beneath it and yanked my hair out of its ponytail, letting it fall below my shoulders. I was ready for my big date with Kyle.

I headed for the passenger side and got in. The car was moving before I even shut the door.

“Pull over,” I told Kyle when we were in the S-curve overpass outside town. Without even looking at me, he pulled right off the road. It wasn't the most private make-out spot on earth, what with cars zooming by, but I guess he figured it was the one I'd picked, so he'd happily go along with it.

He was wrong, though. Even though I thought Kyle was incredibly attractive, making out with him wasn't what I had in mind right then. I still hadn't made up my mind about how I wanted to handle that. But I didn't quite know how to tell him what I
did
have in mind.

I knew we'd drive through here—you sort of had to in order to get out of town—and there was something I'd wanted to do for a long time, but I needed someone with a car in order to carry it out. Jena didn't have one and neither did I, and it wasn't the kind of thing my parents, or even Peter, would have approved of. So when Kyle came along, it was the perfect opportunity.

Kyle had moved in close and was running his fingers along the line of my necklace. “Your skin is so soft,” he said in kind of a dreamy way. As he moved in for a kiss, I slid back and out the passenger-side door. “Where are you goin'?” he cried.

He'd see for himself in a minute. There were no cars coming, so I darted across the road to the cement divider that separated the outgoing and incoming traffic. Once I was safely there, I pulled a can of red spray paint from my bag. I'd had it in there for weeks, determined to be ready if I had the chance to do this.

Kyle got out of the car and stood by the hood. “Gracie?!” he called. He was completely confused, and I couldn't blame him. He started to cross to me, but I was already heading to the other side. I wanted everyone coming into town to see what I was going to write: J. B. Johnny Bowen.

“Whoeee!” Kyle cheered from the divider as I began to spray the initial on the inside of the wall, just near the entrance. “Your G is backward,” he added.

“It's a J, for Johnny,” I called back, still working.

“Hey, yeah. That's really, really sweet,” he said, sounding disappointed. I realized then that he thought I was spraying
our
initials, his and mine, onto the wall. What kind of a lovesick wimp did he think I was? I knew he thought a lot of himself, but that was a bit much. This was only our first date, after all.

Kyle was impatiently waiting for his make-out session. When I got back to the car, his arms were instantly around me and he kissed me hard. I wasn't feeling it and I tried to put him off, but it only made him mad. So I got out of the car and started walking. He drove alongside and told me to get in. When I didn't, he sped away.

It would be cool to have been Kyle's girlfriend. My social status would instantly rise to the level of a cheerleader. Girlfriend of a team captain is pretty high ranking. But I didn't care, just like I didn't care about anything else.

When I got home, I hoped I could sneak in the back door and get to my room without anyone knowing I had ever been out of the house. But when I arrived in the yard, I didn't want to go in.

I wanted to play soccer.

The one thing I
did
care about, nobody would let me do.

Well, I was going to practice, right then and there. I turned on the night spotlights, not caring who knew I was outside. I grabbed a ball and began dribbling it up and down the yard. Then I shot and landed it right in the broken-down goal. I dribbled it back out, shot, and scored again.

After a while, Dad came to the window, probably wondering why the lights were on. In their glare, he didn't see me. Nothing new there. He
never
saw me—not really.

I shot the ball into the goal. “I
am
tough enough!” I said to him, even though he couldn't hear me.

This time something inside me was different. I knew he couldn't hear me, as always, only I no longer cared.

At six the next morning, my clock radio went off and Springsteen, my favorite, began singing “Growin' Up” in my ear. I'd set the clock early so I could get up and do crunches before school. If Dad wouldn't train me to play
soccer, I'd train myself. Next, I pulled on sweats and went out for a jog.

After only three weeks of doing this, I started seeing a change in my body. My abs had always been flat; now they were rock-hard. My calves began to bulge from the daily jog or bike ride.

I was getting there but not fast enough, so I stepped up my routine. After school I dribbled a soccer ball up a steep hill in the park. I installed a chin-up bar in my closet and began working on that. I was terrible at it, dropping to the floor after only three pull-ups.

I had to make my arms much stronger, and I thought I knew how to achieve that. The next morning, I got up even earlier so I could ride my bike to school. The super was just unlocking the side door when I got there, and I slipped in behind him.

By the time Coach Colasanti got to his office outside the weight room that morning, I had been working on lifting weights for a half hour. “The weight room doesn't open until eight,” he told me gruffly. “And it's for boys only.”

I didn't stop lifting. “Are those written policies or just common practice?” I asked. I had prepared this remark ahead of time, knowing the coach would object to my being there.

The coach glanced at me and started picking things up around the room, putting weights in order, throwing old towels in a bin. He wasn't kicking me out, so I figured I'd try to get his permission. “The girls' gym has no
weights,” I pointed out. “I could be here early. No one would know.”

“I'd know,” he replied.

“Is that such a burden?” I asked. Deep down, I knew Coach Colasanti liked me. He loved Johnny and knew my family. Besides, he liked anybody who liked soccer as much as the members of my family did.

He didn't reply, but I knew I could use the weight room as long as no one else found out about it.

It took some more weeks of pumping iron, but soon I could do five, then ten chin-ups on my bar. The work was paying off.

One night I stood in front of my mirror in my sleeveless nightgown and looked at my body. I flexed my arm and a very definite bicep appeared. Pounding my midsection, I could feel that it was rock-solid. I was looking good!

One afternoon after I trained hard, I came home to find Peter out in the yard training with Mike and Daniel. I was drinking a glass of water and watching them through the kitchen window when Mom came in, loaded down with groceries. “Why is Peter here?” I asked her.

“The boys wanted someone to practice with,” she said as she started putting away the food.

I turned my back to the window, angry. They couldn't practice with me? They were just as bad as Dad. It was no surprise. He trained them to be that way.

“Want to go with me Saturday?” Mom offered. She touched the ends of my hair. “A trim would get that hair off your face.”

I jerked away from her. What was this—Remind Grace She's a Girl Day? “I like my hair,” I snapped at her.

“All right, then, we can stop at the mall for some new tops,” she offered. Something was going on with her and I didn't know what. Money was tight at our house. Why did she suddenly want to spend money on me? “I don't like the clothes there,” I grumbled.

“Okay,” she said, sounding a little frustrated. “You choose something we can do together. Anything you want.”

What I wanted was to get away from her. She was acting too weird. I tried to escape into the dining room, but she trailed behind me. “Why are you so angry?” she demanded.

I whirled around to face her. “I'm busy,” I said, practically spitting out the words. It would have been too much to have expected her to notice what I was doing. She could have asked me how the training was going, or
why
I was training. No, instead she criticized my hair and tried to divert me to a mall crawl, something more acceptable for a girl to be doing. I was so sick of nobody in my family knowing who I was!