COMING OF AGE
(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 in the year 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) Luke has been promoted into the same grade as Joan, Grace, and Adam.
(3) Grace and Luke have spent one night together
(4) Joan and Adam are engaged
This story is set in April, 2006)
Chapter 1 Countdown
(Author's Note: Grace's Hebrew name and her date of birth are my invention; LostSchizophrenic pointed out to me that a line in THE SILENCE implied a spring birthday)
Asenka "Grace" Polk was born on April 29, 1988. On April 29, 2006, she would celebrate her 18th birthday, and become an adult, at least as far as most U. S. laws were concerned. And she was terrified at the idea.
She wouldn't admit to that, of course. She still put on the combative, cynical act. But she thought that Luke, Joan, and Adam might suspect it, and were just being tactful and polite about it, because they didn't want Grace to kick their butts.
There was, to start with, the matter of college. Most of her friends were going and knew where. Joan and Adam had found a large university where they could satisfy their diverse interests while living together as husband and wife. Luke was a year younger than the others but had been promoted up a grade by special dispensation; he seemed to be trying in his best to get into Harvard next year. But Grace had, until recently, felt little interest in academics and considered schools as a sort of prison. She barely had enough credits to graduate, and certainly not enough to interest a recruiter.
She told herself that didn't matter. Going to college was a middle class luxury; SHE was going to go out into the Real World and get an apartment and a job. Except that it wasn't that easy. She had tried to get part-time jobs during senior year. One, at a hotel, had flopped when she talked back to some rude customers. A second, at a biology lab run by friends of Luke, had failed because Grace had gotten sick upon seeing an experimental animal dissected. Some radical friends had offered her a job printing pamphlets for their cause, but the pay they were offering her wouldn't cover the rent for an apartment. Of course Grace could economize on rent by taking a roommate, but who wanted to live with her? Joan was her best friend but Grace suspected that even she would panic at the idea of being stuck with her 24/7..
Mixed up with the idea of her own apartment was the idea of privacy. Grace was a rabbi's daughter. To be sure it had not been an ideal rabbinical household, because of her mother's drinking habit. But Mrs. Polonski had finally overcome her addiction, the rabbi had admitted to handling the ongoing crisis badly, and they were both now determined to Do Things Right as parents. Including protecting their daughter from the lust of boys..
Last November, on Luke's 17th birthday, Grace had sneaked into his bedroom and offered to sleep with him that night. It had been her first time and it had been overwhelming, so much so that Grace inadvertently yelled and woke up Joan in the room next door. But the aftermath was frustrating. The Girardis knew what had happened and felt honor-bound to tell the Polonskis. At first the Polonskis had taken the attitude that Luke had seduced their daughter, and even after Grace convinced them otherwise, they still wouldn't permit any situation where the two would be under the same roof for a night.
Grace wanted to do It again, and had come up with various stratagems to avoid her parents, but to her amazement, Luke would not cooperate. He said that he wanted to marry her some day and wanted to earn her parents' respect, particularly since there were also religious differences to surmount. Grace was not interested in marriage for a long time, no matter what her friends were doing, and the excuse struck her as feeble. If he really wanted her, wouldn't he want another night with her? Was it possible that Grace had been a lousy lover? One more thing to worry about.
Others seemed to be enthusiastically grasping their futures. Joan and Adam were engaged to be married, and had found a college. Friedmann and Glynis were not only married but had a new baby. They had blundered into that, but they had made it a success and even kept up their grade point averages, and needless to say, dozens of colleges were open to those to those two brains. Luke had hopes of Harvard, and clearly any lesser school would be even easier for him to get into. Grace just felt left behind.
Grace even had competition that she hadn't met. After going on a trip with her father on an investigation the week before the birthday, Joan had come back, bubbling over about the new friend she had made, a Veronica Mars from California. Veronica had apparently had several tragedies in her life, but she was combative and fought back, usually with success. She had unraveled several mysteries concerning her rather dysfunctional family and hoped to become a professional detective using the same skills. Joan was so impressed with her that she had let Veronica into the Big Secret: that Joan and her Arcadia friends went on missions for God.
Grace wasn't sure that Joan even regarded her as "best friend" anymore, because she had actually not seen her much outside of school for the last few months. Of course there were reasonable explanations: Joan still had that job at the bookstore, and she was making preparations for her wedding (and probably assuming that Grace wouldn't be interested in bridal stuff), and maybe she had personal divine missions that she didn't want to talk about. Still, Grace felt the absence.
It was Monday, April 24. One week to straighten out a host of problems. Of course there was nothing magical about her 18th birthday: it was only in the last generation that it had come to be considered the dividing line, and even then it didn't carry the right to drink, which Grace didn't care about. By Jewish custom Grace had become an adult when she completed her bat mitzvah. All the same, she had the irrational feeling that if something was wrong on April 29, it would be wrong for the rest of her life.