Like any school in Anytown, USA, Jupiter Middle School has its cliques: the gods and goddesses, the gear-heads, geeks, goths, and the going-straight-to-juvies. Then there’s the one most people belong to, the “get-bys”—the non-standouts, the under-the-radars who don’t merit the spotlight, but aren’t lame enough to be losers.
I was a get-by.
I was content. The spotlight was never my best light.
Everything changed when I returned to school in the beginning of December. I was no longer Grace Abernathy: get-by. I was “the girl whose dad got killed.” A celebrity.
The goddess-girls, who’d never noticed me before, pretended to be close personal friends. They’d sidle up, squeeze my arm, and say something syrupy like, “I heard what happened. Sorry,” accompanied by a phony sympathetic look. A few said that if I wanted to hang out—or sit with them at lunch—that would be cool.
As if I wanted to be popular-by-tragedy.
They pitied me. I loathed them.
On the flip side, some kids I’d been friendly with acted as if I had the plague. They avoided me completely, even averted their eyes when I was around. Like losing your dad was contagious.
The few who made it easy didn’t overthink it. They just blurted out in passing, “Yo, heard your old man got shot by a gang—sucks, dude,” and kept on walking. No reaction required.
Most offensive were the leaders of the God Squad, Meredith Hess and Teresa Gomez, who tried to make me their special project, offering to accompany me to teen survivors’ groups, giving me Bibles and books, forwarding posts I should read, links I should click on. The Dead Father’s Club, really? As if befriending me gave them points with the Almighty or something. I admit I was just waiting for them to say, “It’s all part of God’s plan.” Or “It’ll make you stronger.” Or “He’s in a better place.”
Because if they had? I’m a peaceful person, but I might’ve gone all Pat Tillman’s brother on them. Pat Tillman was the war hero whose death by friendly fire was covered up by the military. At his funeral, famous people said things like, “He’s in a better place now.” And Pat Tillman’s brother got up and, um—angrily disagreed.
The varied reactions of my peers—“God,” bad, and ugly—paled in comparison to the worst person of all, Ms. Downy—Downer, or Dowdy, kids call her behind her back—the school-appointed grief counselor. At first, I pictured her like an arts and crafts counselor, only for grief issues. I thought she might have me make a collage depicting my feelings.
What she did was way worse. She told me she knew “exactly how I felt.”
Really? She knows how it feels to not be able to breathe because every breath feels like a knife to the lungs? How a cold emptiness can take up as much room inside you as multiple pig-outs? Unless she was me, she couldn’t know.
I couldn’t forget …
It was just after last period and I was on the athletic field along with Jazz, Kendra, Mercy, and several dozen girls trying out for the middle school’s junior varsity softball team. I remember the sharp tingly smell of just-mowed grass and the crunching sound my cleats made as I crossed the field. I ran my hand over the raised gold stitching of my softball jersey spelling out WARRIORS, and the number—my number if I made the team—22, also stitched in gold on our blue-and-white uniform. My striped knee-highs met the hem of my white softball pants and itched just below the kneecap. My hair was a little short to be pulled back into a proper ponytail, but I thought it’d look cool if I gathered it and threaded it through the back of my softball cap.
It was November, a perfect time of the year where I live, warm and breezy, with not much humidity. The palm trees around the field tickled the sky. But my eyes kept returning to the bleachers. Five rows up, east-facing, between home plate and first base, that’s where my dad would be sitting.
Dad would normally be at work that time of day. But I’d coaxed him into leaving early.
Other parents were there, mostly moms, but so far, there’d been no sign of Dad. Didn’t matter. The positions I’d tried out for so far—outfield, shortstop, first base, pitcher—were not my position.
Catcher. That was me.
A position my body type—short, compact, and strong—is uniquely suited for. Not to brag, but I have a precise eye, and I’m a really good catcher. Now, watching others try out for the position, I knew it was in the bag.
I just needed my dad to be there when my turn came up.
When it did, twenty minutes later, he still wasn’t there, but unless I was hallucinating, my mom was crossing the field. Mom rarely came to games, and never to tryouts. She was wearing her teacher clothes, today a long saffron skirt and matching blousy top. Sensible flats.
Crouched at home plate, I raised my glove up to pocket the ball being pitched by Jasmine. Jazz is a lousy pitcher, so I was more focused on how far away the ball was going to fly than wondering about my mom materializing. But as she got closer, I saw her face clearly. It was blotchy, as if she’d broken out in hives, and streaked with mascara lines. She was saying something to the first base coach, who promptly signaled for a time-out.
This was making no sense at all.
I felt a tap on the shoulder, so I stood up and swiveled around. Regan was here, too? Big sunglasses covered her face—but I could tell she was neither smirking, posing, or pouting, her usual repertoire of expressions. And to my shame, I remember thinking: Mom and Regan are here. I must’ve already been picked for JV and they’re here for a surprise celebration. That was my last coherent thought before my memory shatters into kaleidoscopic slivers of glass.
Coach ordered the field cleared. When Mom reached me, she said nothing at first, just cradled me in her arms. I was so embarrassed! All eyes were fixed on me as the girls, headed for the lockers, filed past. I should have realized a whole lot sooner that Mom would never hug me like that in front of other people.
Unless she couldn’t stop herself.
Smoothing my pitiful little stub of a ponytail, she sobbed into my ear, “Oh baby, we need to go now.”
I have no memory of getting into our car. I was surprised that someone else—a police officer—was driving. Fast. Weaving in and out of traffic, down Military Trail, onto Route 95, off at the 45th Street exit. A siren blared, obscuring my hearing. That’s probably why I didn’t hear my mom trying to explain what had happened. I think my teeth were chattering.
We pulled up to St. Mary’s Medical Center. I’d only ever been there once before, when a line drive hit Kendra in the head and she had a concussion. I remember the hospital lobby being spacious, airy, and antiseptic smelling, but today all I could see were dust motes floating inside streaks of sunlight.
We were hustled into an elevator, then guided along one corridor and turned down another corridor, mazelike. My cleats squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. I wondered if that was breaking some kind of “no cleats” rule, like they have at the library.
I’m ashamed to say, even standing with my mom and Regan outside his room, a nondescript cubicle in a busy intensive care unit with only a thin muslin curtain shrouding his bed, my brain still could not, or stubbornly would not, connect the dots.
I registered the presence of a stream of nurses passing by, walking around us as if we formed a boulder in a rushing river. A trio of scrubs-wearing doctors stood nearby, consulting among themselves in hushed tones. Beeping noises coming from behind the curtain kept a chaotic beat.
Mom was trying to talk to me, but she wasn’t making any sense since she kept choking on her sobs.
Maybe that’s why, in the end, all I heard was my sister’s voice.
“Grace, you have to listen. Dad got shot while he was getting into his car. No one knows who shot him. He’s not gonna make it, honey.”
It’s okay. It’s okay. That’s what I thought. No big if he doesn’t make my tryouts.
“Does she want to see him?” One of the doctors, an intense guy with eyes as black as coal, had come up to us. He meant me. Did I want to see him? As if my mom and Regan already had.
Of course, I thought. I reached out to part the curtain that separated me from my dad.
Regan grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back. My big sister draped herself over me and whispered, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“She should say good-bye if she wants,” my mom choked out, trembling. “Do you want to say good-bye, Gracie?”
Say good night, Gracie. That’s what my father used to tell me every night before I headed off to bed. He said it was a joke from a classic TV show about a man with a ditzy wife named Gracie. At the close of every show, he’d tell her to address the audience and “Say good night, Gracie.”
With a big, naive smile, she’d look directly at the audience and go, “Good night, Gracie.”
Good night. Not good-bye.
“Good night, Gracie,” I said numbly.
When Regan, my too-cool-for-the-room sister, wept, that’s when the horror of what was happening began to sink in. I got it. And I lost it. I gulped great gobs of air. I hyperventilated until everything went white.
“Hey, girl, figured I’d find you here.” Mercy’s voice snapped me back to the present. It was lunch period, and instead of hanging with my friends like I used to, these days I trek across the athletic field and plant myself in the bleachers. A familiar feeling of despair was settling over me today. My “big idea” about JJ was turning into a bust. We hadn’t learned anything else about the potential robbery, and every time I forced myself near enough to say something, he turned away. It almost felt like he was repulsed by me, instead of the other way around. Like he’d been some sort of victim, and I was the perp.
Mercy climbed the benches and plopped down next to me. She looked cute with her hair in dreadlocks. Her nose ring glinted in the sun.
“Hey, Merce,” I said, not unhappy to see her. “Bored of the cafeteria scene?”
“Not yet.” Of my friends, Mercy knows me best. No way was she here to coax me inside, or do any version of the “it’s time to get back to normal” dance.
“Social studies is next period,” Mercy said, pulling a notebook out of her backpack. “And if … just in case you didn’t do the homework … ?” She paused, though she’d guessed correctly.
“… here.” She opened her notebook and took out a neatly typed copy of the assignment in our World Cultures unit, “How geography has affected China’s population distribution, economy, and culture.”
My shoulders went slack. “Thanks, Merce. That’s so cool.” It really was, since Mercy had no mercy when Jazz cheated on a test. Now she was offering something almost as bad. “It’s no big,” I told her, turning down her offer. “I’ll deal.”
We spent the rest of the period together. I tore off bits of my egg salad sandwich and tossed them to some very excited seagulls. Mercy tried to entice them with her lunch—whatever organic concoction her health-nut mom had packed that day—but even seagulls, it seems, have their standards. Which did drag a giggle out of me.
I actually shocked myself by asking about the eighth-grade dance—not that I was going, but Mercy was on the committee.
“It’s going good,” she said. “I talked Rico Martinez into deejaying—”
“That’s amazing!” I cut in. Rico’s in high school and hands down the best spinner around. Getting him was a real coup.
Mercy beamed. She stopped short of asking if I would come. She knows better. When the bell rang signaling the end of the period, she did offer up her homework again. But I couldn’t take it.
Whether I would have finagled my way out of yet another missed assignment or taken the F as Mr. Defendorf would likely give me—I’d reached my quota of incompletes in this class—I’ll never know, because I got intercepted in the hallway by Mrs. Downy.
I frowned. Thought I was done with her.
“Hello, Grace. Would you mind following me to my office?”
I would mind very much, but doubted I had a choice.
“I’ve signed you out of social studies,” she informed me. “Mr. Defendorf has excused you from this class.”
“Guess I’ll see you next period,” I said to Mercy with a shrug.
“I’ll take notes for you,” she offered, and squeezed my shoulder in solidarity.
Mrs. Downy shut the door before taking her seat behind her gunmetal-gray desk. She clasped her hands and leaned forward, staring at me from behind her owl glasses, which only accentuated the deep pockets under her eyes. “How are you doing, Grace?”
I squirmed. How do you think I’m doing? is what I wanted to say, but I squashed my sarcasm. “Okay, I guess.”
“While I’m not sure I agree with you, unfortunately, this is not a talk-therapy session—”
I exhaled, relieved. The last time I’d had to sit through her talk therapy, there was all sorts of psychobabble about my life having “a new normal.” I wonder what she’d say if I told her that my “new normal” involves a talking dog, a thief masquerading as my sister’s BFF, and an unconvicted felon in my face three days a week.
“—I’m afraid we have to discuss your grades,” she was saying.
I tensed.
“I’ve been given copies of your work from your teachers,” she went on. “It doesn’t show much effort.”
That’s because I don’t care about them, I didn’t say.
“In fact, from midterms on, it looks as if you haven’t turned in many homework assignments, nor passed any exams. Your grades are slipping.”
Feeling like I had to say something, I went with, “Sorry.”
“How can we work together to reverse this trend?” she asked. A variation on the “help me help you” theme. I wanted this session—this non-talk-therapy session—to end. Sooner would be better than later.
“I’ll try harder.”
That wasn’t going to cut it. “Should we go through your classes one by one and work out a plan?” Her eyes were now on her computer screen, where my less-than-sterling grades were listed before her.
“That’s not necessary,” I said quickly.
“It doesn’t look good, Grace. Too many incompletes, Fs, and Ds.”
Tell me something I don’t know, I thought miserably.
And she did.
“At this rate, you’ll have to repeat eighth grade. Grace, you’re not going to graduate.”