**hi everyone, I don't own these characters but I'm pretty sure they own
me. I've never written fanfic before but I've written a lot about these
characters. After reading this over I noticed it's kind of, uh, dark, but I
promise things will look up-I just wanted to add in some good old fashioned
teen angst, since I'm too old for it myself. Please please please review!
Thanks.**
The day Mr. Dimitri left, Grace stopped writing altogether. She wanted to spite him, mostly, for being a liar and a hypocrite, for pushing her to become more real and then shrinking away from reality, himself, when it proved too much to handle. But even if she wanted to write, she couldn't.
The story he had written for her through the tiny gestures which no one had noticed but which had changed her life, couldn't be translated into a work of fiction. The Chekhov, the inscription, the way his face softened when he said "which doesn't mean I won't miss you," even the way he'd teased her on the first day of class, humiliating her in front of everyone and making her hate him. These things would all sound banal on the page; she didn't know how to show anyone where she had been without going back there, without getting lost.
But one day when she came home from school there was a package on her desk, unopened. She unsealed it to find a set of plain white paper with green borders and matching envelopes along with a note scrawled on torn notebook paper: "Grace, I hope you know that you can still tell me anything, even if you can't say it. Judy"
She snorted and threw the note in the trash. It had been weeks but everyone around her still felt it necessary to nurture her as if she had been recently widowed, even though these were the people who weren't even willing to accept that her relationship, or whatever they called it, was real, was important. To them, it was all fiction. She was a misled naïve child who had was so lonely that she'd clung to the first person who gave her the time of day. Mr. Dimitri, on the other hand, was a monster. That was all there was to it.
But even though Grace had gone on with life as if nothing had changed, it seemed to her like people were never satisfied with the way you reacted to their actions. Did her mother expect her to suddenly turn into Jessie, to grow long blonde hair and act sweet and loveable now that she wasn't a nymphomaniac misfit who was possibly sleeping with her English teacher?
She took the stationary and shoved it under the bed. Her mother called her to dinner and she sat at the table, listening to Jessie talk about her science project while Zoe stole all the carrots from Grace's plate and Lily just smiled like everything was perfect. Everything.
But Grace knew that the whole time she was moving her fork around, flirting with the lettuce on her plate her mother was watching her, wondering if she was thinking about him, if she was wondering whether he was eating dinner alone, whether he liked iceberg lettuce or romaine, whether he was proud of himself for leaving or if he was in agony.
The truth was, she had thought about these things many times, in the beginning. She had decided that he didn't like lettuce at all, that he ate alone in the dark, that he was miserable. She liked to imagine him bowled over in pain, suffering from food poisoning or the stomach flu. She hoped that every time he thought of how he'd left, he'd suddenly develop some painful ailment and spend the rest of the night praying to survive. She smiled every time she imagined this.
But now every time she tried to conjure these solemn images, they would waver and fade and the only thing that remained was her memory of what he had said to her. She would wait for the familiar pain to make its way from her feet up to the space just above her stomach, below her ribs. Then when it was gone she would go upstairs, grab the pencil she had borrowed from him once and never returned and jam it into her thigh until she couldn't stand it any longer.
That was the only way she could be sure that something was still living in her, was still hungry enough to go on. But she never cried anymore, and she never wrote a word. After all, what was the point? There was no one to listen now.
The day Mr. Dimitri left, Grace stopped writing altogether. She wanted to spite him, mostly, for being a liar and a hypocrite, for pushing her to become more real and then shrinking away from reality, himself, when it proved too much to handle. But even if she wanted to write, she couldn't.
The story he had written for her through the tiny gestures which no one had noticed but which had changed her life, couldn't be translated into a work of fiction. The Chekhov, the inscription, the way his face softened when he said "which doesn't mean I won't miss you," even the way he'd teased her on the first day of class, humiliating her in front of everyone and making her hate him. These things would all sound banal on the page; she didn't know how to show anyone where she had been without going back there, without getting lost.
But one day when she came home from school there was a package on her desk, unopened. She unsealed it to find a set of plain white paper with green borders and matching envelopes along with a note scrawled on torn notebook paper: "Grace, I hope you know that you can still tell me anything, even if you can't say it. Judy"
She snorted and threw the note in the trash. It had been weeks but everyone around her still felt it necessary to nurture her as if she had been recently widowed, even though these were the people who weren't even willing to accept that her relationship, or whatever they called it, was real, was important. To them, it was all fiction. She was a misled naïve child who had was so lonely that she'd clung to the first person who gave her the time of day. Mr. Dimitri, on the other hand, was a monster. That was all there was to it.
But even though Grace had gone on with life as if nothing had changed, it seemed to her like people were never satisfied with the way you reacted to their actions. Did her mother expect her to suddenly turn into Jessie, to grow long blonde hair and act sweet and loveable now that she wasn't a nymphomaniac misfit who was possibly sleeping with her English teacher?
She took the stationary and shoved it under the bed. Her mother called her to dinner and she sat at the table, listening to Jessie talk about her science project while Zoe stole all the carrots from Grace's plate and Lily just smiled like everything was perfect. Everything.
But Grace knew that the whole time she was moving her fork around, flirting with the lettuce on her plate her mother was watching her, wondering if she was thinking about him, if she was wondering whether he was eating dinner alone, whether he liked iceberg lettuce or romaine, whether he was proud of himself for leaving or if he was in agony.
The truth was, she had thought about these things many times, in the beginning. She had decided that he didn't like lettuce at all, that he ate alone in the dark, that he was miserable. She liked to imagine him bowled over in pain, suffering from food poisoning or the stomach flu. She hoped that every time he thought of how he'd left, he'd suddenly develop some painful ailment and spend the rest of the night praying to survive. She smiled every time she imagined this.
But now every time she tried to conjure these solemn images, they would waver and fade and the only thing that remained was her memory of what he had said to her. She would wait for the familiar pain to make its way from her feet up to the space just above her stomach, below her ribs. Then when it was gone she would go upstairs, grab the pencil she had borrowed from him once and never returned and jam it into her thigh until she couldn't stand it any longer.
That was the only way she could be sure that something was still living in her, was still hungry enough to go on. But she never cried anymore, and she never wrote a word. After all, what was the point? There was no one to listen now.