State Of Grace

Chapter 26 - Tell Me Why

As per usual when a bomb dropped on Gracie's life, her nights were taken up by perpetual dread and anxiety and any sleep she managed to get was plagued by nightmares. Luckily, her new bed wasn't as squeaky as the old camp bed which was older than Riley, so she didn't have to worry about waking up her sisters as she tossed and turned in the night. Her mind was in a constant battle of emotions, flipping between thoughts of Rachel, thoughts of her birth mom in prison, and thoughts of her father somewhere out there in the world with no idea that she existed.

Even though Stella and Lilah hadn't made their mind up, Gracie was preparing herself to see her birth mother. It wasn't much use though, without Rachel in her corner sending reassuring texts and whispering sweet nothings through the phone, she didn't know how she would get through it. They'd broken up before, but this time felt different. More final. More painful. Gracie's whole body ached for her, she even missed arguing with her. It was usually Rachel who did most of the arguing if Gracie didn't text her back right away or if her texts somehow sounded off, or if she was talking about her foster family too much, but still, she longed for her.

She was finally starting to doze off when the sunlight hit her eyes.

"Hey, are you getting up?" Riley opened the blinds on Friday morning, "You're going to be late."

Gracie didn't respond, she stayed completely still staring at the ceiling, feeling a hollowness she hadn't felt since her last depressive episode.

"Are you okay?" Riley stopped what she was doing and crouched down beside Gracie. She glanced over to Maia, who shrugged and shook her head. "Should I get moms?"

Gracie contemplated it for a moment, staying curled up in bed for the rest of her life was all she wanted to do, but if Stella and Lilah came up and saw that something was wrong, they'd probably both take the day off work to take care of Gracie. She couldn't have that on her shoulders too, the last thing she wanted was anyone making a fuss over her and asking questions about her mood when she didn't have the energy to keep up the lies. It would be easier if she just went through the motions and kept her head down for a while.

"No," she finally said, "I'm just tired," she sighed and got out of bed, throwing on whatever clothes were nearby and following sluggishly behind her sisters down the stairs.

The day went slowly, as had the whole week. Gracie's friends could tell she wasn't herself as she gave one-worded replies in conversations and stared off into the distance for extended periods of time, but they knew about the situation with her birth mom and assumed her withdrawn manner was about that. At Danny's request, they avoided the topic as much as possible.

Elle was getting worried though, she'd never seen Gracie so low, so she tried to get her to open up when she and Gracie walked down to the beach at lunchtime, hoping that time away from the hustle and bustle of high school might put at her ease.

They sat down and slipped their shoes off, burying their bare feet in the sand. Gracie thought she'd done a good job at masking her feelings, but she'd caught onto Elle's ploy the second she looked at her with concerned eyes, somehow Elle could turn Gracie's walls to glass.

"I know you don't want to talk about your birth mom, and I get that. Is there something else going on too?" Elle asked, "You've listened to me drone on and on about my parents divorce for months, you know you can talk to me too, right?"

"I know," Gracie stared straight ahead with a poker face, out of tears at this point, "That girl I told you about? She dumped me. Right here on this beach actually," she looked across the sand at the lifeguard tower a few hundred yards away.

"Oh, Gracie, I'm sorry," Elle held her friend's hand, "What happened?"

"I'm not sure exactly." Gracie cast her mind back, even after thinking about it all week, it still didn't make any sense to her. "We were talking and I think I said something that upset her, she got kind of mad, and I told her I love her but I guess she didn't believe me. I went over the conversation in my head a million times and I still can't figure out what I did wrong. I tried to tell her I was sorry but it's hard to apologize when you don't know what you're apologizing for."