Grace

7. The Park Bench of Awkwardness

The first couple minutes at the park were extremely awkward. The two teenagers sat on opposite ends of a bench overlooking the duck pond. Grace told Jordan to look natural, which meant that Jordan stared off into the distance making weird faces and trying to remember what his natural one looked like. He glanced at Grace out of the corner of his eye. She was bent over her sketchbook making light marks with a pencil. Every so often she would mutter something about proportion or shading, and raise her head to stare intently at Jordan's face. Her grey-blue eyes had the same glazed-over look that his mom's got when she was in her Writer's Daze.

Finally, she seemed to notice his discomfort and snapped out of it. She laughed. "Do you want me to draw you with that face? You look like you smell something bad."

"Oh, sorry. I've just never done this before, I guess."

"Just relax. You're allowed to talk so long as you don't move around too much. Besides, I like getting to know the people I draw. It helps me capture them better."

"Okay... so how long have you been drawing?" kind of a dumb question, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Ever since I was five and got one of those 84-count boxes of crayons all to myself!" she said. "Then at our old Catholic school I had a really great teacher who introduced us to pencil sketching. I fell in love with it and I've been drawing ever since. Now I'm taking classes at the community college for credit. It's awesome."

"So you went to Catholic school?" he wondered what they taught the kids there.

"Up until ninth grade. Then last year my dad lost his job." She let out a breath. "That was a crazy time. Meg was just getting ready to pay for college, and money got really tight. We had to move out and downsize. Our new house is too far away from our old school, and we can't afford to go there anymore anyway. So now the younger kids go to the elementary school and I'm at good old McKinney High." She finished and smiled at him. "So now you know my life story. You're welcome."

Jordan considered Grace a little differently. She had been through a lot in a short time and now she was being bullied at her new school. But she still seemed so content, like she couldn't be any happier just sitting there right where she was, at exactly the situation her life was in. He wondered how she did it.

"Enough about me. So what do you like doing in your spare time?" she prompted.

He shrugged. "Soccer and video games."

"Soccer and video games," she murmured, like she was adding that to the sketch of his face. "That's cool. Toby says he wants to play soccer. Of course, he was all about football two weeks ago, so I don't know if this new resolution will stick."

Jordan nodded vaguely, becoming bored of this conversation. Grace tried heroically to keep it up, asking him questions about school, his family, but Jordan just answered in monosyllables. Eventually the two dwindled into silence. Grace was hunched over her sketchbook, and Jordan began to mentally count all the places he would rather be besides here.

A couple joggers passed by their park bench. The sun played on the surface of the duck pond. Jordan yawned. Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance siren wailed.

At the sound, Grace stirred and Jordan noticed that she was crossing herself like she had done at lunch yesterday.

"Why do you do that?" he asked suddenly.

Grace blinked. "Do what?"

"That thing that you do." He clumsily imitated the gesture.

"Oh, The Sign of the Cross? It's a tradition we have in my family to say a quick prayer every time we hear an ambulance going by-you know, for who ever might be sick or hurt."