The next morning things had gone as Grace expected. She'd woken up, thanked Simon for allowing her to stay and left. His mother had offered her breakfast and she'd considered taking her up on it but ultimately decided against it. After all, there was no use in delaying the inevitable fight waiting for her at home. As she drove towards the center of conflict in her life she turned the radio up in the misguided hope that maybe it would drown out her thoughts. It didn't, of course, and Grace began mentally rehearsing what she'd say.
Of course, she wouldn't implicate Simon in any way, she still needed her parents to like him or else she'd have an entirely different can of worms to grapple with. She pulled up to the gate of her home and considered just turning around and driving into the sunset never to be seen again before shaking that thought from her head and pulled into the driveway parking her car. As she got out she half expected to see her mother standing on the porch in a robe, mug in hand waiting to chew her out.
She wasn't, of course and Grace entered into the house and silently hoped that her mother would be out, giving her just the tiniest taste of freedom before it was ripped away from her possibly forever. The universe granted her no such luck as she saw her mother sitting casually on the living room couch. Grace could tell she'd heard her enter but her mother made no move to look at her or address her presence in any way. She'd force Grace to be the one to make the first move.
"I'm home." she said quietly. Her mother paused the show she was pretending to watch and turned to look at her.
"You're in the same clothes from last night, where have you been?" she asked and Grace prepared her answer.
"I stayed the night at a friend's place." she said confidently because it wasn't technically a lie.
"Your boyfriend?" her mother asked and Grace responded.
"No, Taylor." she said. Grace felt bad about dragging someone who had nothing to do with the situation into her drama but her mother already hated Taylor and it wasn't like he was allowed around the house anyway. She needed Simon to continue being seen as a paragon who was fixing her. Her mother looked somewhere between annoyed and furious.
"Of course you were over at some boy's house and you didn't even have the decency to make it your boyfriend. God Grace, tell me, is everything you do to embarrass me or is that just a side effect of your actions?" her mother asked. Grace remained calm.
"I didn't want to stay over here because I didn't want to get into a fight." she explained. Her mother rolled her eyes.
"If you were really so concerned about not starting a fight maybe you'd consider not dressing so ridiculously, or not yelling at me and making a scene in restaurants, or not sleeping with random boys." she said coldly. Grace rushed to her own defense.
"I didn't sleep with him mom, why would you think I'd do that?" she asked annoyed. Of course her mother thought the worst of her.
"I don't know Grace, these days I don't know what you'll do until you're doing it. You're eighteen years old and yet I feel as though I'm parenting a toddler." her mother kept a low even tone as if they were in a public place and she was worried about people hearing them. Really, it was another ploy. As long as she kept her voice down any slight uptick in volume from Grace would be taken as an outburst. Grace at the very least wasn't falling for that trick again and kept the same low even tone.
"I assure you it won't happen again." Grace explained.
"I know it won't, because I'm taking your car." she said calmly gesturing for the keys which Grace promptly handed over. This almost got a rise out of Grace. Almost.
"Ok, that's fine." she said calmly though internally she was panicking as she was likely going to have to rely on the help of others, namely Simon, in order to research the train. That was if she was ever allowed out of this house again. Her mother raised an eyebrow at her reaction and as if still determined to get a rise out of her daughter she looked at her for something else to pick on. She set her sights on the flyer hanging out of Grace's purse. Snatching the thing and reading it over she looked at her daughter with annoyance and disgust.
"Still with the trains Grace? I thought you'd gotten over this particular delusion and yet you're still pursuing it." she put her head in her hands and let out a long suffering sigh as if her daughter had done her the greatest disservice in the world. "Is it drugs? Is that way you act this way, because me and your father gave you too much freedom and you got into drugs?" this finally garnered a more dramatic reaction.
"What? No, i'm not on drugs, it's just a train show." she said at a slightly louder volume, though she refrained from dipping into yelling. Her mother finally bothered to stand up from the couch.
"Well how am I supposed to tell when you consistently insist on resisting every bit of normalcy and support I try to inject into your life? Why wouldn't you start doing drugs as a symptom of your obsession with acting irrationally?" her mother said frustrated. At the very least she had been the one to raise her voice first, and that gave Grace license to match her tone, or at least it did in principle.
"I don't have an obsession with acting irrationally, I act in a way you don't like and I don't get why it bothers you so much! Why are you so obsessed with trying to make me act like you?" she questioned. Grace was surprised at the swiftness and emotionality that came with her mother's response.
"You are like me! You can try to mask it with awful clothes and by having outbursts and by running away but you are just like me! I am trying to save you the trouble of trying to be different because you'll end up just like I did and the quicker you accept it the happier you will be!" her mother yelled. Grace thought she could see tears in her eyes but realized it was simply her eyes narrowing in frustration. She had never once seen her mother lose her cool, every time they'd argue even when she got loud in the end she'd turn on that calm cool voice and act like anything she'd said was irrelevant.
But in her words Mrs. Monroe had betrayed her true feelings, the reasons why she behaved as she did. To her Grace was nothing more than an extension of herself, the youthful rebellious side who'd yet to accept the real world. Controlling her daughter, reining her in, was doing her a favor, preparing her for reality. To make Grace into a version of herself was to finally off the part of her that never accepted her role in society. In Mrs. Monroe's mind, she was saving her daughter from having to do it to her own child years down the line.
Grace looked long and hard at her mother for any sign of self reflection, any sign of remorse. She searched her mother's face and begged to see anything there but the selfishness and the bitterness that her statements indicated as her sole modes of interaction with her daughter. In her face she found only what her words conveyed, Grace Monroe was nothing to her but an immature brat who'd yet to learn her place. Until she fell in line that was all she'd ever be to her mother.
"I'm going to my room to study." she said to no one in particular as her mother turned her attention back to pretending to watch television in order to ignore her daughter and Grace walked to her room taking a shower and changing into her typical attire deciding that she might as well wear the clothing she enjoyed if she was going to be trapped. Flopping on the bed and staring at the ceiling she tried to rationalize the feelings about her mother that swam around in her head. Grace quickly texted her friend group letting them know about the situation.
"How sad, Grace will have to take the limo instead of driving" Delila texted alongside a violin and a crying emoji. Of course she was right, Grace still had access to a personal driver, she'd have no issue getting somewhere like school. But it also meant that there was no way she could go anywhere her parents wouldn't approve of as she had no doubt the drivers were being paid extra to snitch on any locations she requested that weren't pre-approved. Essentially, she was locked out of any locations that weren't school, home, or the library.
She texted Simon the news of her imprisonment, as well as the story she'd used to keep his name clear of all ties to her so called outbursts.
"that sucks" he responded with his characteristic lowercase letters and lack of punctuation. "how are we going to keep investigating" he questioned, or Grace assumed it was a question as he once again failed to use punctuation.
"You're going to bust me out, obviously." she explained and she could practically sense Simon raising his eyebrows from behind the screen.
"i thought you wanted them to like me" he said and Grace explained what was obvious to her.
"That's why you're not going to get caught dummy." she said
"ah obviously" he responded. "and what is the plan for this" he asked. Grace quickly texted back.
"That's for you to figure out, just be here before ten so we can film." she shot back, shirking the responsibility for figuring out a practical way to sneak out. She turned off her phone and rolled over onto her stomach looking around her room. It was almost like a museum of Grace Monroe, multiple items that indicated interests of past iterations of herself could be seen, stacked on bookshelves and packed away into closets. Her violin from grade school, her ballet shoes last worn in the eighth grade, and her paint supplies which were still in use.
She grew and changed so much in all of that time and not once had she ever felt like someone good enough for her mother. Whether she strived to be a perfect copy of her, or broke away and fought against every attempt to be held to her standards. She'd never been enough, and she was sure she'd never be. There was almost a comfort in that realization, the fact that she'd never be the daughter her mother wanted because all her mother wanted was unwavering compliance.
She'd spent so long questioning why her mother treated her the way she did, asking herself if she was somehow to blame. Knowing that she wasn't was like a weight being lifted off of her shoulders. Grace let out a deep sigh before getting off of the bed and grabbing one of her textbooks. She was still committed to education after all, not for the sake of her mother but for the sake of herself. Grace was absorbed in her work, only broken from her state by a text hours later. The message from Simon simply read, "window"
Grace walked over to her bedroom window and looked down to find Simon standing beneath it frantically waving his arms. Grace could barely hold back a laugh. "How did you even get past the gate?" she called down and Simon gave his response.
"Do you want an answer or do you want to film an episode?" he asked and Grace considered it for a moment before raising her own objection.
"How do you expect me to get down from up here?" she asked once again looking down.
"Just jump, I'll catch you." he said and at this Grace really did laugh.
"There is no way in hell your thin ass e-boy arms aren't going to break trying to catch me." she said through her own laughter. Simon rolled his eyes.
"I swear I'm stronger than I look." he said and Grace gave him a long look before agreeing.
"Fine, but if you die, at your funeral I'm walking up to the podium just to say I told you so." she said as she began climbing out of the window. Simon responded as she did this.
"Really, at my funeral you're going to go in front of my poor grieving mother and say that?" he asked, trying to paint a morbid picture, something which Grace squarely rejected.
"Your mother will thank me, she deserves to know her son died being a dumbass." she said before taking a deep breath and hopping down while closing her eyes. She completely expected to hit the ground or to land on a particular pale idiot. To her surprise neither of those things happened as Simon easily caught her in his arms. She opened her eyes and looked at him. "You actually caught me?" she said caught off guard. Simon smiled.
"Yeah, I told you I would." he said before smirking. "I guess you could say that I swept-" Grace gave him a look that indicated continuing with that joke would mean the termination of their friendship and he shut up though he kept that same goofy look on his face.
"You can finish the joke." she said eventually, sighing.
"I guess you could say that I swept you off your feet." he said laughing through his own awful excuse for humor. Grace pretended that she didn't find it cute.
"Let's just go film the episode." she said exasperated.
"You know I'm still holding you, right?" Simon pointed out and Grace realized at that moment that she'd gotten a little too comfortable in Simon's arms and looked away embarrassed.
"I'm sorry let me get down-" she started before Simon shook his head.
"It's cool, I'll carry you to the car." he said and then started doing that before Grace could make any more protests. Grace knew that she'd complain about it later because she felt like it was the only way to preserve their friendship. But that was something to be done later. In that moment Grace cuddled up against Simon and didn't even pretend not to enjoy it.