The following characters are not my creation or property; they are used without permission, intent of infringement or expectation of profit. This story was written as part of Fan The Vote. Thanks are greatly due to my betas, Rheanna and Rivka T. Feedback can be sent to yahtzee55555@yahoo.com

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FIVE THINGS SHE'S NOT
By Yahtzee
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Grace is not the kind of girl who goes all soft and gooey because a boy gives her a gift. A rock, even. It's a geode, and it's beautiful, but still, it's a rock.

The geode is supposed to represent something between them, though exactly what that is could only be defined in Luke's mind, a place Grace doesn't intend to explore. But she's fairly sure that it's meant to change their relationship from friends and antagonists - Grace sees no contradiction - to boyfriend and girlfriend. Grace is not the kind of person who could be happy calling herself a "girlfriend." It diminishes you, in her opinion, makes you half of something instead of whole.

But what is it that she embodies on her own? Grace has spend so much time declaring what she is not that she finds herself almost wholly unsure of what she is.


1) Grace is not a planner.


Two kinds of people plan out their lives, as far as Grace can tell. The first group is made up of girls who keep diaries, who are generally 12-year-olds overly fond of exclamation points and the color pink. Grace had more dignity than that when she was 12, and is certainly not about to stoop to such depths now. The second group contains corporate types who chart their goals in terms of financial performance, who divide time into "quarters." This is something Grace is sure she will never be.

Of course, she has ideas about what her life will be - everyone does. But her focus on these ideas is farsighted, sharper in the distance, cloudy up close. It will be decades before she can expect to be a judge, but she can see herself on the bench, giving both hell and mercy, depending on where they're deserved. On the other hand, she can't quite picture herself meeting Luke at the movies next week, even though she has agreed to do so. It will happen - Grace's confusion about all of this wouldn't drive her to do something as mean as standing Luke up - but she can't imagine anything to say to him when it happens.

Whatever her plan was, Luke was not part of it.


2) Grace is not a people person.


"What fresh hell is this?" 

Grace read that in a book of quotations she found in the library and laughed out loud. It was exactly what she wanted to say about pretty much every element of high school, only she'd never put it quite that well. The woman who said it was called Dorothy Parker, and Grace wants to read some of her stories this summer. She will read these stories in her room. Alone.

One of the worst things about high school, in Grace's opinion, is the omnipresence of other people. Every class is stuffed with twice as many students as she knew in middle school, most of whom are still asking the stupid questions they asked in middle school. The hallways are packed with them between classes and after school, shoving up hard against her shoulders, whether accidentally or on purpose. P.E., the ninth circle of hell, can only be entered and departed via the locker rooms, where the other girls giggle at Grace's utilitarian cotton underwear. Like thong-wearing idiots should have the right to laugh at anybody.

Her father says, in that wise way of his that has so little to do with the real world, that she must not let them get to her. It's not that simple. They got to her a long time ago, and they're already rubbed her raw. Every new abrasion falls on old scars, aggravating them. If she could start fresh - walk into a brand-new school, where nobody had ever laughed at her, or scrawled mean things on her notebooks, or called her a lesbo - then maybe she could learn to hold her head high. Maybe she could do it, if she could begin again on her own.


3) Grace is not a loner.


If her father told her that they were moving to a new town, where she could go to a new school, Grace would refuse to go. She would take steps. Dramatic steps. Chain herself to a mailbox or something. She's not going anywhere.

Leaving Arcadia, sweet as it will be after her high-school graduation, would kill her now. The small notch she's carved out for herself in this town is more precious because it is so small, because she had to work so hard to do it. And the few people she can stand to be around were very hard to find. Grace isn't sure she could bear to begin all over again.

Where else would she be able to find somebody like Adam? Whenever self-pity beckons - and it does, though Grace tries to deny it - she thinks of Adam and what he's been through. And instead of hating the world, or turning into his own personal Trenchcoat Mafia, he's created a studio. He turns his troubles into art, which is so amazing that Grace almost can't snark about it.

And then there are the Girardis - but that gets into a whole weird area.


4) Grace is not straight.


This belief has been popularly accepted by Grace's peers since puberty. At any point between then and now she could have dispelled their assumptions in any number of ways: hooking up with the guys who are always looking for someone to hook up with, wearing stupid, uncomfortable clothes that accentuate her body instead of jeans and T-shirts, even growing out her hair. She doesn't know why her classmates think only lesbians have short hair, but they seem to.

Grace has never done any of those things, both because she's never wanted to and because dispelling their belief has never seemed important to her. She's not at all sure it's not true. If heterosexuality means getting totally stupid around a guy - the way the girls at school do, giggling one minute and weeping hysterically in the bathroom the next - Grace has never known it.

When she thinks about love, about what she'd like it to be, Grace thinks about feeling safe, and not having to explain herself all the time, and being able to share the deep stuff as well as the stupid stuff, and accepting the good with the bad. The only times she's ever felt like that have been with Joan, and there have been a few moments - rolling eyes at each other during interminable pep rallies, riding home from the movies late at night - when Grace has wondered what Joan might do if Grace tried to hold her hand. She's never dared to find out.


5) Grace is not gay.


This fact became clear to her the first time she kissed Luke Girardi.

Luke, of all people. He's not exactly the embodiment of masculinity; Grace is pretty sure she could take him in a fight. Though he is cute in a way. If she squints, she can get a glimpse of the guy he'll be at 21, and that guy is pretty damn cute indeed.

But she's not dating Luke at 21, who will have another four inches of height and a body big enough to match his hands and feet and probably his first college degree. She's dating Luke at 15, whose desk is piled high with video games, who's pushier than she is and who never, ever seems to shut up.

Is he what she wants? Is any guy? She's always meant to work out her confusion on her own. Not with Luke's hand in hers.

His palms are usually kind of sweaty. That ought to gross her out, and it doesn't, which is just another reason Grace doesn't know what the hell is wrong with her these days.


These are all the things Grace is not. But what is she?

She has researched sexuality late at night on her computer, tried on words like "bisexual" and "boi" and "queer," but none of them fit. All the websites seem so excited that people don't have to choose what they are anymore. They're not really set up for people like Grace, people who want one answer to live by.

So that answer - like all the others - will have to unfold in time.

Grace spends the evening over at the Girardis. Ostensibly she is only visiting Joan, who has just gotten out of the hospital and is still depressed. (But the moods might just be the illness - there's no knowing.) Of course, she sees Luke too, and in a quiet moment he runs one of his hands through her hair. Luke likes short hair. But she ends up talking with Mrs. Girardi, and joking around with Kevin, and watching TV with Mr. Girardi takes some time to explain the basketball playoffs to her, why the game on that night is important. She's even sort of interested in sports for about ten minutes there, which must be some kind of a record.

When she goes home that night, she stares at the geode. It sits on the bookshelf nearest her bed, and her Venetian blinds divide the moonlight that falls on it into stripes. The outside of the geode is gray-brown and uninspiring, but the crystals in the middle glitter in the moonbeams. Grace can see green and gold and blue swirled together, and she thinks about nothing except those colors, how mixed-up they are and yet how beautiful, until she falls asleep.

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THE END


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