Meanwhile, Grace and Luke were sitting in Graces's car, waiting for Joan and Adam to leave. "Are you still mad at me?" Luke asked timidly.
"What?" Grace asked angrily. "I was never mad at you, geek."
"But - but you yelled at me back there," Luke stuttered.
"So?" Grace said. "That doesn't mean I was mad at you. That's just the way I act. You should know that by now."
"You are so weird," Luke told her.
"Hey," she retorted, turning to him, "do you really want to start something?"
Luke looked scared. "No. No, ma'am."
"Don't call me ma'am, either. I'm not that old."
"Yes. Got it. When you sound mad, you're not, and don't call you ma'am." Grace started laughing at him. "What? Did I forget something?"
"No. It's just that," she paused, "you're kinda cute when you're trying to piece things together."
Luke smiled slightly. "I like this side of you, Grace."
Grace suddenly got a scowl on her face. "Don't expect me to be all happy-go-lucky now. That's not who I am."
Luke rolled his eyes. "I don't believe that. I don't believe that you came out of the womb hating the world. Something precipitated your change. I'm just trying to figure out what."
Grace was silent for a moment, then asked him, "Why do you care so much?"
Luke gave her a look. "Because I care about you. I don't want to see you ruined by your own loathing of everything good and fair in the world."
Grace shook her head angrily. "What's so good about Communism? What's fair about killing someone because their skin's a different color or they don't dress like you or because they don't like the same ice cream as you do?" Luke raised an eyebrow and Grace continued her rant. "Not everything in life is good. Or fair. Why bother being happy if everything you're happy about is just going to be taken away from you?"
"I'm going to take a wild stab and say there was some kind of tragedy in your life."
"It doesn't take a genius to figure that out," Grace said. She paused, then said, "I don't want to talk about it."
"It's okay. I'm not asking you to," Luke assured her.
She sighed and started talking anyway. "It started when I was 10."
"Grace, I said you don't have to talk about it if you didn't want to."
Grace shot a dirty look at him. "Shut up and let me talk." Luke nodded and pointed a finger at her, signaling for her to continue. "Well, you know that my dad's a rabbi." Luke nodded his head. "You have to promise me that no one, especially your dad, finds out about this."
Luke looked worried. "Did you do something against the law? Or your dad?"
"Well, not exactly, but it wasn't exactly commendable behavior."