DREAM GIRL
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)
(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place after the JOAN OF ARCADIA TV show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. The main events that have happened since May 2005 are
(1) Joan has let Grace, Luke, and Adam into her secret
(2) Joan and Adam got married in June, 2006.
(3) Joan, Adam, and Grace have graduated from high school. Luke was jumped a year and allowed to graduate with them. Now Luke is at Harvard, Joan and Adam at a small college named Baconia U., and Grace is in Europe working with a famine-relief agency.
This story starts in September, 2006)
Chapter 1 Grace's visit
I made my way across the central courtyard. I still had not gotten over how attractive the school grounds were, compared with my high school. Arcadia High was, as Grace had once put it, a box to keep students in. This was, in theory, a garden where knowledge could grow.
Still, the place was not ideal. Grace was gone, and Grace could make a biology closet seem like heaven. Nor was I surrounded by loved ones: the parents, Joan, Kevin, and Lily. Oh, I got along well with my roommate Tom, who talked half-seriously of someday writing the Great African-American Novel. But I hadn't gotten to the point of telling him the big secret about the Lord of the Universe paying visits. Much less did I feel like telling anybody else.
Taking my mind of my brooding, I saw Tom actually walking from the other direction.
"Hi, Luke," he said. "I wanted to tell you not to wait for me tonight. I've got a history paper, and I think it will take me up to about 10:30 in the library. And the rest of the time I will spend with Babs, as a reward for good behavior."
"Okay," I said. I was still startled at the frankness with which others discussed their love affairs, compared with Grace's secretiveness when we first got together.
"I've told you, Luke, that Babs knows lots of girls. If you want a date— "
We'd been through this several times before. "Thanks, but I've got a girl."
"Sure – in Italy. And planning to move even further away soon. Don't get me wrong, Luke; I admire your friend for devoting herself to making the world a better place. But it's scarcely a good basis for a love relationship."
"We'll try to make it work," I insisted.
"Well, good luck with that."
I continued on my walk. Ahead of me, a groundskeeper was raking early fall leaves off the path. I hesitated, not wanting to get in his way.
"That's very considerate of you, Luke," he said, as if I'd expressed my intention and given my name.
It was one of the God avatars, I realized.
"—but perhaps you should be thinking more of yourself."
"Why? I'm not a very interesting subject," I said, borrowing a joke from THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST.
"But you are important to you, Luke. And your grades aren't doing well."
"It's my first term away from home. Culture shock."
"Is it all that you're away from, Luke?"
I sighed. "You know what I'm feeling. I wish Grace was around. But I know she isn't, and why she isn't, and that's that. Is this a hint that you want me to go join her? I thought everybody agreed that I was better off coming here to improve my mind."
"I'm not hinting anything, Luke. I just want you to acknowledge the problem."
"What's the good of acknowledging a problem when there's no answer?"
But the Groundskeeper God just waved and walked to another patch of leaves. Great. As contacts with the Divine went, this was one of the fuzziest. Had I been handed a mission or not? Maybe I'd know when the mission came up, or when it whacked me on the head.
I went to the computer lab and did a little work on my GNA simulation program. It had been obvious from the start that actually trying to synthesize a variant of DNA in a test tube would be difficult and expensive. Computer simulation was the way to go in the early stage. Once I had gotten the kinks out, my mentors explained, I could show it to some influential people and possibly get some funding. The one catch was that people always wanted to know what GNA stood for. I'd say "Grace's Nucleic Acid" and they'd be curious who Grace was, at a time when I'd want to get my mind off our separation.
After adding a subroutine to prune the population of dead-end developments, and I went back to my dorm. With Tom gone I didn't have anything particularly planned for tonight. Maybe talk to Joan and her husband by Email. I was composing a possible message in my mind as I unlocked the door to my room.
Grace was standing by the window.
She was wearing pajamas, slightly strange pajamas that she must have bought in Europe. She looked disoriented.
"Grace?"
"Luke!" she shouted in relief, running into my arms. It was wonderful to touch her like this again, but even so I was aware that she was not hugging me just out of love. Something had badly frightened her, and Grace does not frighten easily.
"Grace, how did you get here?"
"Where is here?"
"My dorm room in Harvard. Cambridge, Massachusetts."
"Last I remember, I was going to bed in my flat in Rome. Falling asleep. Oh, I get it. I'm having a dream."
"This isn't a dream, Grace."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm real, not a dream character."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm conscious of my own existence. As Descartes said, I think therefore I am."
"Oh, don't go all dork on me. We're together, let's do something about it. At least talk about something else."
We sat on the bed. Suddenly Grace asked, "Have you met any pretty girls at Harvard?" It did not sound accusing. It sounded teasing and unconcerned, rather as if Joan had asked it.
"Grace, you know I won't get interested in pretty girls when you're in my life. Other pretty girls," I hastily amended.
She laughed. "Thanks for the 'other'. But I wish you would find a girl. It would make me feel less guilty about that guy—"
"We agreed not to discuss that again, Grace." She had gotten entangled with an Italian guy named Antonio, going swimming and horseback riding with him. I was convinced that it was a matter of loneliness and culture shock and that her real passion was for me. But Grace had an odd notion of tit-for-tat. She wanted me to tat for her, um-- "Let's talk about something else."
"We ship out next month for an African province called Modishko," she said. "It'll be the height of the planting season."
"Planting?" This was September. "Oh, spring south of the equator."
She nodded. "Not likely to be online, or with a cell tower nearby. It'll be hard to communicate privately."
"We'll survive. Up to a few years ago that kind of separation was the normal lot of humanity."
"Well, we're together NOW, though I don't know how it happened. Let's take advantage, OK?"
She hugged me. We exchanged a lot of kisses, and she sank back on the bed, pulling me with her.
I don't know how far we would have gone. Neither of us had "protection", and we certainly didn't want Grace's plans to be derailed by a pregnancy. But the problem was solved when Grace suddenly vanished.
I uttered a few rude words that were not usually part of my vocabulary, and looked wildly around my room to search for a transporter beam or something. Grace had left nothing behind, not even a whiff of perfume, which she never wore. Had she ever been here in Cambridge? Or was I going crazy?
TBC
