Grace watched curiously as Simon paced back and forth adding various strings to the cork board that he was working off of. The introduction of the cork board had replaced their former method of research and conclusion drawing which had been the white board covered in unintelligible writing. Pictures of the locations they'd visited with notes written by Grace were now how they tried to establish a pattern. And now Grace sat and watched as Simon struggled to make a useful connection.
"We're close, I can feel it," he began "There's just something we're missing." he said tiredly as he stared at the board. Grace, taking a form of pity on him got up from her chair and put her arm on his shoulder.
"Why don't we wrap it up for the day?" she asked. Simon looked as though he was considering it before waving the idea off.
"We're really close Grace I can feel it, you can go home if you want but I've got to figure this out." he said before removing a pin holding a string and moving it over a different picture. Grace sighed to herself. She knew that Simon wasn't exactly good at taking care of himself, he'd let his physical and mental health go to shit if he thought it would be beneficial to finding the train. Grace sat back down and turned towards Simon's computer.
"What's your password?" she asked casually not at all expecting an answer.
"It's Honeycomb with a capital H." he said calmly. Grace entered in the password and was surprised when it worked.
"Dude you just let me into your computer? You don't want to clear your search history first?" she asked jokingly. Simon turned away from the board and addressed her.
"Nothing to hide, nothing to clear." he explained. "What did you want it for anyway?" he asked as Grace went onto Google.
"I'm going to check the view counts on our last two videos, and read the comments." she explained. Simon sucked the air in through his teeth to indicate that she was making a mistake.
"You know you're not supposed to read the comments." he reminded her. Grace mostly ignored him in favor of checking the numbers. The videos were both doing well, they gained a sizable following and the videos were all fairly popular. Grace scolded down to the comments despite Simon's warning though most were positive or joking.
"This one says, 'Simon is hot but in the same way as the emo kid from Horton Hears a Who'." she read, barely containing her laughter. "It has 2.5k likes." she added, still laughing so hard breath escaped her. Simon looked over at her, concerned, before she caught her breath.
"I'm glad that you got a kick out of that one." he muttered.
"I'm going to like it." she said before doing just that.
"What, no don't like it. You're on the channel account." he said. Grace ignored him as she kept scrolling past the uninteresting comments. There were a few asking if they were a couple, something which Grace also elected to ignore. She likely would have continued for quite a while longer had she not gotten a text from her mother.
"Where are you?" the text read. It was at that moment that Grace remembered that she'd promised that she would go to dinner with her parents that night in order to discuss future prospects in terms of college.
"Ughhhhh." she groaned, annoyed at the current turn of events. Simon gave her a curious look and she explained the situation. "I told my parents I'd have dinner with them tonight and I completely forgot." she explained. Simon nodded.
"That sucks." he said sympathetically.
"I know." she responded before starting on a text in response. "I am at the library with Simon. We are both studying." she lied. Grace held her breath and hoped that her mother wouldn't ask for proof.
"We were supposed to have dinner tonight." she said as reminder and Grace let out a sigh of relief that she'd accepted the story without question.
"I'm sorry, I forgot, I'll be there right away." she texted and Grace expected that to be the end of the conversation as she began putting her personal effects in her bag only to be surprised when the phone buzzed again.
"Bring Simon. The reservations have been pushed back to seven, don't be late." her mother had texted. Grace wanted to scream but instead elected to take a deep breath and turn towards her friend.
"Hey, so-" Simon cut her off.
"What do you need from me?" he asked expectantly but amused. Grace let out a defeated sigh and gave him the rundown.
"How does me giving you a makeover so that we can go to dinner with my parents in an hour sound?" she asked. Simon let out a dry laugh.
"It sounds awful, but I'm going to do it anyway." he said honestly. Grace smiled and did her typical making Simon look normal procedure. After he'd changed clothes he looked her over and raised a concern.
"Are you going to wear that to dinner?" he asked. Grace had on the typical pastel fair that her parents couldn't stand and called gaudy.
"Can I change in your bathroom?" she asked. "And before you ask, yes I do keep a pair of boring clothes in my bag." she explained. Simon nodded and Grace walked into the bathroom to change her clothes. Upon exiting she and Simon exchanged a look and he blushed, something that was made obvious by his overwhelming paleness. Grace smirked at his reaction and teased him.
"You think I'm pretty when I dress normal?" she asked with an air of playfulness in her voice. Simon, never one to be out done quickly gave a response despite his reaction.
"I always think you're pretty." he shot back and Grace felt her face grow hot. Now it was Simon's turn to smirk at her. "Now we're both flustered." he said victoriously. Grace casually rolled her eyes.
"Let's go to dinner." she said before grabbing his arm and making their way to the car. Upon arriving at the restaurant Grace did her best to give a general rundown of what he would need to know. "Alright so, I've already quizzed you on what utensils are for what things, I've already told you how to order, so just remember the fake life we've crafted for you and try to control your overwhelming crush on me." The last part was said as seriously as the rest of the information though it was a joke.
The two entered into the restaurant and walked up to the hostess who took them to the table upon hearing the name on the reservations. As they approached the table Grace could see her parents sitting there and having a conversation that stopped promptly upon seeing her something that clued Grace into the fact that the conversation was about her. The two sat down and Simon gave handshakes with the proper Sir and Ma'am monicers he'd been taught.
"Nice of you to join us, Grace." her mother said and Grace bit her tongue because the tone of that comment had set the mood for the entire evening. She simply nodded and gave a smile which made her feel sick to her stomach.
"Of course, I wouldn't want to miss dinner." she offered. Grace desperately hoped that this would be enough to steer the conversation to another topic.
"Well don't get too excited for dinner, you'll still need to fit into a prom dress you know." her mother added casually. That comment infuriated Grace for multiple reasons. The first was obviously that it was a rude and degrading thing to say but the second was that, like with her mother's threat to kick her out, Grace knew it wasn't true. Grace knew that her mother didn't actually think that she was in danger of not fitting into a dress. But her mother knew acting like she did would upset her and that was why she said it.
Grace wanted to get up from the table and leave at that moment. Under the table Simon hesitantly gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and Grace allowed it because it calmed her down enough to laugh off the unwanted comment. Simon decided to do her another favor and changed the subject. Turning to her father he addressed him respectfully.
"So, Mr. Monroe, sir what do you do for work." he asked. There was no way he could have known it but Simon had asked the exact correct question. Her mother did not like to interrupt her father and her father could and would talk about his job for hours because it was the type of thing that was important to him. He started and went on for a little while but before Grace could regain her footing in the conversation and recharge after the draining comments from her mother something happened.
"You know I love hearing you talk about work, but we did have this dinner for a reason love." her mother said interrupting her father's speech. Grace felt her throat dry as both of her parents' eyes became trained on her as her mother spoke. "So, as we've mentioned, me and your father have picked out a few colleges we want you to attend and we'd like to discuss some of the options." she began before listing off the names of a few top schools. Grace frowned as the list grew longer and more prestigious.
"My grades aren't good enough to get into those schools." Grace said curiously. Her mother waved her off.
"Don't worry about things like that, we've got it all taken care of, that's the way of the world." she said casually. Grace's eyes narrowed.
"Mom you can't manipulate people to get me into a better college than I'm eligible for, that's not right." she said seriously. Her mother let out a groan.
"Can you please not do this Grace?" she asked frustrated. Grace tried to keep calm as she asked for clarity.
"Don't do what?" Grace questioned. Her mother let out another long suffering sigh before gesturing at her up and down.
"Don't do this, get all dramatic and irrational. I swear I invited your boyfriend because I hoped that you'd at least behave yourself in front of him." she said with an edge in her voice.
"Behave myself?" Grace asked more aggressively than she'd intended. Her mother's eyes narrowed at the sharpness in her tone.
"Yes, behave yourself. Because right now you are acting like a child. I hoped that you'd at least have the good sense not to embarrass yourself in front of him but if you want to make a scene in this restaurant I have no problem doing it for you." she said darkly before turning to Simon. "It's a miracle you put up with her, I mean if you think she's bad now you should have seen a few years ago when she wouldn't stop going on about some magic train, we thought she was crazy." Grace stood up quickly and shook the table a bit as she did.
"I'm going home." she said before walking off from the table. As soon as she was sure that she was far enough away from her mother to not be heard the tears began flowing freely from her eyes. Grace walked out into the brisk night air and stood against the wall of the restaurant crying. She heard footsteps approaching her and looked up to see Simon.
"Are you okay?" he asked though it was clear he knew the answer.
"I don't know why she does this to me. I should be better than this but I'm not. I'm standing outside of this restaurant crying and she's inside and fine because she won, she always wins and I-" Grace couldn't even finish her thought when she started crying again.
"She's wrong, wrong about the train, wrong about the world, and she's wrong about you. You are not irrational and you're not dramatic. You deserve to be happy." he said seriously. Grace stared at him through the tears in her eyes and threw her arms around him in a hug.
"Thank you." she said as Simon hugged her back. "I need this." she buried her face into his shirt and felt for a moment like her mother hadn't won this time.