Grace Polk is hanging out on the smoker's steps, thinking about skipping out on English, when she sees the boy talking to Joan. There's nothing special about him, but she looks twice anyway. Brown jacket, jeans, short hair. Nothing special at all.
She goes to English and doesn't think about the boy once. Not once.
He's there again, a week or two later, talking to Joan in the cafeteria, by the sloppy joe meat. He'd be cute, if Grace went for that sort of thing, which she doesn't. She doesn't really know what she goes for; she knows what people say about her, that she's a lez, but that's okay. Maybe she is. Except for kissing Luke at the dance, but that doesn't really count, does it?
The third time Grace sees the boy talking to Joan, it's in the hallway. They're standing in the middle of the hall, and everyone walks past them without a glance. Grace blinks, because she sees how they walk, splitting apart and coming together, like a stream around a stone. Joan and the boy are still and quiet at the center of the current.
Later, in AP Chem, sitting between Adam Rove and Joan, Grace asks, "Who's that guy you're always talking to?" and Joan looks flustered and weirded out for a minute.
"What guy?" she finally says.
"What guy?" Grace mimics. "That guy in the hallway, like fifteen minutes ago?"
Joan pulls her curled-lip 'what the hell?' face and says, "I wasn't talking to a guy; I was talking to that old lady who helps the nurse out."
.
.
When Grace was twelve, her dad had Father Brady from St. Alphonsus over for dinner. It was some kind of cross-faith 'get to know you' thing. Grace thought that one up all by herself--'cross-faith'--and laughed. The priest wore regular clothes, much to Grace's disappointment, and spent the evening chatting politely and dodging Grace's questions.
"Why can't girls be priests? They can be Rabbis, you know."
"Why can't priests get married? Rabbis can."
"Do you really believe Mary was a virgin? So what did God look like when he knocked her up? Was it like when Zeus hooked up with mortal girls, like he looked like a swan, or a bull, or a rain of gold?"
At this, her dad smiled and suggested she might like to start working on her homework. "Not really," she answered. "Did God actually have sex with her, or do you think he just said, 'Boom, you're pregnant'?"
.
.
Joan is talking to the guy again not three days after Grace asked about him in Chem. Grace sees them from across the street, while she's ditching Social Studies. She walks across the street without checking for traffic and stomps up the steps, but the guy's gone when she reaches Joan. "Saw you," Grace says.
Joan stares at her like she's crazy. "Saw me what?"
"That guy. You were talking to that same guy. Is he like, your boyfriend? Is that why you lied in Chem, because you didn't want to talk about your boyfriend in front of Adam?"
"Why would Adam care about my boyfriend," Joan says, wrinkling her nose. "Not that I have a boyfriend. 'Cause I don't. Have a boyfriend. Did Adam say something?"
"Then who is that guy? Why are you being sneaky?"
"Uh, I was talking to that janitor," Joan says, waving her hand vaguely.
"Fine. Don't tell me," Grace says, setting her jaw. She goes to Social Studies and is only five minutes late.
.
.
Grace can count the number of times she's worn a dress on her hands. It would be one hand, but she wore that pink thing to the dance with Luke, so that's six times. Two hands.
At her bat mitzvah, she wore this ugly blue explosion of frills her mom picked out. It itched and made her feel five-years old. "Religion is the opium of the masses," she told each person who congratulated her. Everyone smiled back, uncomfortable and bewildered.
Hiding out in one of the stalls in the bathroom, Grace heard some older woman saying, "Is that any way for Rabbi Polonski's daughter to behave? Shameful, that's what it is."
Grace grinned.
.
.
She's started thinking about the boy more and more. She looks for him now, but hasn't seen him in weeks. He must be a student, but maybe he skips even more than she does.
Joan won't say a word, and just looks freaked out and starts playing with her scarf when Grace brings him up.
Grace thinks, she saw him in the cafeteria, the hallway outside Chem, and on the front stairs. Maybe she'll see him in one of those places again. She's kind of obsessing, she knows, but it doesn't bother her. She'll catch up with the guy, get his deal, and it'll be all over. It's only curiosity.
.
.
Grace dreams about him at night. He smiles, and she feels it in her spine. The sun is shining, and they're in the playground across from school. When she starts to ask him her questions, he touches her lips with his finger and smiles again.
She hears wings beat against her bed; the feel of feathers brushing her eyelids wakes her up. Her room is empty, and the only sound is a gnarled tree limb tapping at her window--rat-tat-tat--in the wind. It gives her shivers.
.
.
He's there, in school, the next day, waiting by Joan's locker. Grace sees him and thinks about not going over and talking to him, just letting it stay mysterious and strange. Instead, she walks towards him, keeping her eyes on the back of his head. She can see Joan walking from the opposite direction. Just as Grace is about to reach out and touch the boy's jacket, she stumbles, tripping on a physics book someone's dropped. When she looks up, Joan is talking to that weird security guard, the one with the greasy hair and the stains on his uniform.
The boy is gone.