A/N This is for episode2x02, "Out of Sight" Episode 2x04 "The Cat" has aired in the US, which is perfect since I really wanted to deal with information we learn in "The Cat" in this chapter, but be forewarned that if you haven't seen "The Cat," and you don't want to be spoiled, you probably shouldn't read this.
Fluctuating walls
"You know, like Luke listening to an Abba CD?" Joan said, my ears involuntarily perking at his name.
My head shot up. "Abba? You're kidding. I mean I don't care...."
Joan continued on about her crisis of the week as I tried to process this new and alarming piece of information. Abba? Why Abba? They were a washed-out group from the lamented disco era, why in the world would he like Abba? I answered Joan's question about what I do when I want to annoy my dad or something as I tried to fit liking Abba into my image of her brother.
Who was this guy? I know he thinks far too much about physics, and that he is a better kisser than a science geek has the right to be, but really, what else did I know?
"Abba and those little meatballs. No wonder Sweden's filled with drunks," I muttered into my locker.
"Thanks for the support, Grace," Joan said, yanking me out of my reverie. She let out a groan and I turned to her, determined to put Abba and their fan out of my mind.
"What's wrong," I asked.
"Nothing," she said in that way that clearly meant something was terribly wrong. "See you in class," she told me, and then walked down the hall.
I will never understand her.
He walked by a minute after Joan left, close enough that my skin started to tingle as he approached, but thankfully far enough that he wouldn't make any contact.
"Hey," I whispered, causing him to freeze in his tracks and look at me. I kept my eyes down as he started to move closer to the lockers.
"No," I hissed, and then waved him around the corner. He sighed, then stepped past me and stood looking at the flyers tacked above the fire extinguisher.
"Do you like Abba?" I asked.
His eyes snapped to me and he looked about to ask me out why I would ask that. He rolled his eyes back to the flyers, and I could tell he was thinking that this was an unfortunate side effect of his sister being my best friend. "I bought their CD."
"Why?"
"I thought...you know, that we could listen to them together."
"Dude, Abba?" I asked.
"I thought you might like them 'cause everyone hates them."
Abba was for my benefit? He didn't know me at all!
"Well, you thought wrong." I said, trying not to panic. "Tell me you don't have any Bee Gees in there." He didn't answer. "Dude?"
"It's just music," he stated.
"Just music?" My voice had risen louder than I intended, and I glanced behind me to be sure that no one had caught on to the fact that we were having a conversation. Didn't he get that there was more at stake here than just music? "Meet me tomorrow night with mixed CDs. If we find no common ground, we're toast,"I told him before I escaped.
---
He was sitting by the tree when I arrived with my CD player. We'd agreed that morning that blaring music at the café would defeat the purpose of the wall, so we decided that the park after sundown was a better choice.
"OK," I said as I sat down in front of him. "What do you have?"
He looked at me blankly. "Hello, Grace. It's nice to see you too."
I rolled my eyes at him. "Just get your CDs."
It took all my self-control to not forego the CDs and the five-minute rule in the darkness as he pulled out a CD and put it in the CD player. I handed the control to him, and snickered when he took out a full piece of paper.
He looked up at me. "What?"
"A list? How long did it take you to do that?"
He sighed. "I....just wanted to bring a broad and varied selection. The list is for organizational purposes."
"OK," I tried not to laugh. The irritation in his eyes grew as he caught my amusement, so I tried to smother my smirk. "No, really it's..." several words went through my head. Charming. Sweet. Cute. Words I never use. "It's fine."
He looked at me for a few seconds, and then returned to his list. "OK, um, let's start with this one," he said, taking out a CD.
Halfway through the first song, I had heard enough. "No, no, no. Hip-hop is supposed to be about defiance and social justice. This mainstream trash has totally sold out to the corporate rats."
He started to defend his selection, but I didn't want to hear it.
"Next," I said.
"You're very intolerant," he accused.
Things deteriorated from there. He actually brought classical music with him, a bad omen. When I put in one of my favorite CDs, the CD I play when I'm actually in a fairly good mood, he barely listened to them before dismissing them out of hand.
I should have known this was a mistake. This just wasn't going to work. The kissing was nice—more than nice—but we really were as different as we seemed.
"Look, dude, we tried," I told him, struck by the unpleasant thought that he would probably never really comprehend me. "But music is vibrations, and my music is a representation of my inner vibrations..." I trailed off.
"And if we don't share a common rate of vibration, what do we have?" he asked, agreeing that maybe we really were a mistake after all.
The thought made me sick.
A group of people strolled by carrying one of those big boom boxes from the eighties on a dolly. It was blaring "Celebration," one of those pathetic songs that school bands attempted to play at pep rallies.
"At least you didn't bring that." I said, and then realized he had said the same thing. At least we both knew bad music when we heard it. I glanced at him, enjoying our shared disgust of the song.
His voice brought my gaze away from the crowd. "A shared experience of dissonance creates its own harmony."
"What?"
"Harmonic resonance. It's one of the basic laws of physics. Our mutual hatred for Kool and the Gang has formed a harmonic union between us." I sat listening to him. Not really to what he was saying, because he had slipped into the science geek talk, but listening to his voice, watching the excitement in his eyes as he explained how we fit according to physics. I didn't know about that, but in that moment, I did know this. He was right. There was a harmonic union, and instead of being disgusted or indifferent, I felt something bubble inside of me and escape.
"I think I feel it," I said, laughing in relief. I knew I had that goofy smile on. I didn't care.
"Grace," he said, leaning forward and gazing me. "This is our song."
I sucked in my breath as a thrill of simultaneously warmth and fear shot through my body, causing my insides to tremble. Having a song was a completely sappy and coupley thing to do. It definitely violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the confidentiality agreement. I should have told him off, right then, that he and I would never have a song, and suggesting such a thing put him in serious jeopardy of contractual violations. Instead, I leaned forward and closed my eyes as his lips softly met mine.
---
I meant it when I told him I didn't like parties. Parties had a way of getting out of hand, and I avoided them as often as I could. But when my friends were involved, it seemed more important to be there than to indulge in my antisocial inclinations. Adam was here, and I needed to be there for Adam.
That's why I had gone to the Girardi's party. At least, that's what I told myself then. When Sleazey and Twitchy mentioned a keg, I knew I couldn't let Adam go there alone. Adam and I had a silent pact about this type of thing. That night as I approached their house, I couldn't help the dread that came over me. These were the good kids. Why would they feel the need to get themselves in a mess like that? That night turned out OK, though. They had forgone the booze and stuck to soda. Had I known that, I might not have gone. Not that I mind being there. Even in the chaos of that evening, their home was familiarly comfortable. I know I seemed to not care what was going on around me that night, but the truth was that if raiding the refrigerator was their biggest problem, they had it easy. Besides, he already had one eager beaver helper. My involvement would have just been...detrimental.
But tonight was different. Tonight there was so much alcohol I could smell it all the way from the hammock, away from everyone else. I could think of a million other places I'd rather be than sitting in this hammock and staring at a hundred people making fools of themselves. Having a root canal was one place; back underneath the trees in the park was another.
"High school house party-- a primordial soup of hormonally charged organisms just longing for a lightning bolt and a little innocent mitosis," he said, sitting in the hammock with me. It was a decent size hammock, easily big enough to fit two. Especially if the pair put their legs off to one side and sat next to each other. Hammocks could be pretty great places for quality together time, I decided.
"Dude, article 3, paragraph 2: Parties, no contact, no communication." I said as I pulled myself up and walked away, none too pleased with him for kicking me out of my comfortable spot.
I walked over to a yard chair and watched Joan and Judith act like monkeys on the trampoline. Judith, I knew, was spiraling downwards all night, and while Joan was more or less staying away from the stuff, she wasn't doing Judith any favors by playing along and encouraging her. What was worse is that she was either all over Rove, or ignored him completely. Sometimes I wonder why he puts up with her.
Adam wandered over from the trampoline where he had been watching and sat down on the small table in front of me.
"If she had an off switch, I'd use it," I told him.
Adam nodded, silently stood and passed me to go into the house, resting his hand on my shoulder for a brief moment. I slumped in my chair and stared at the pair in front of me. The root canal was looking better and better.
I heard the music stop in the middle of a song, and the drums and the horns of a new song begin. It was just a few days ago that I had silently consented to the silly notion that this song meant something. I scanned the room for the culprit of the sudden music change and found him looking at me from a window inside the house. I stared at his silly little smirk as he nodded his head, beckoning me to follow him. I turned my head away from him and shook my head. The guy was getting entirely too cocky for his own good. The idea of me running after him like a lovesick puppy was ridiculous. If he thought that I was going to follow him into a darkened corner and let him bestow kisses on me....
I slowly got up and turned toward the house. When I got to the spot by the window where he had been, I saw him standing next to a door in the hall. He caught my gaze and raised his eyebrow before ducking into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. I made my way over to the door, and then slipped through, silently closing the door behind me.
He was standing next to a window, and the moonlight illuminated his smile.
"You have a lot of nerve, buddy," I said, walking over to him, wishing my voice sounded angrier than I felt.
"I know," he murmured, sounding almost contrite. "But I couldn't resist. You're just too alluring."
I snorted. "You're so full of it," I said, willing back a rush of pleasure without much success. He smiled and wrapped his arms around me, then dropped his head until his lips lingered momentarily above mine, a dazed look crossing his features in blissful anticipation. In the next moments the party around us fell away, and the only thing on my mind was the feel of his lips.
A few minutes later I heard the song start again, and I broke our kiss. "You put it on repeat in an attempt to circumvent our 5-minute make-out rule," I accused softly, unable to hide my satisfaction in the last couple moments.
"Free will between the amorous parties supersedes contractual duty, rendering our agreement void ab initio," he said, staring into my eyes, daring me to refute him.
His spurts of boldness never ceased to amaze me. "You're impaired, dude."
"Caveat emptor. I have grounds to renegotiate," he stated, lightly squeezing me to him. I smirked at his declaration, and then tilted my head back to receive his kiss.
A few minutes later, I sighed into his mouth, kissed him once more quickly, and then pulled away again. "Really, dude, we gotta quit."
He groaned and laid his forehead against mine. "You're killing me you know," he said, lightly, kissing my forehead.
"You'll live," I laughed as I detangled myself, reluctantly, from his grasp.
I felt his eyes on me as I left the room, and it was all I could do to not throw him another flirty look and remark. I figured the guy didn't need to be tormented anymore than necessary.
As I made my way through the house, I noticed that someone was sprawled out in the middle of the living room floor. As I looked closer, I realized that it was Judith. I knelt down beside her and tried to get her to answer me.
"Back off, Marge. She's mine," I heard from behind me.
"Did she finish this whole bottle in an hour?" I asked, ignoring Friedman's despicable remark. This was exactly what I was afraid of happening.
"Is that even possible?" Friedman asked densely.
"Yeah, if you want to die," I told him. "Call 911!" I said, and then went back to trying to wake up Judith. When he just stood there, I reeled on him, "Do it, freak!"
The paramedics arrived and began to work on her as I stood watching the familiar nightmare. I vaguely remember hearing Joan yell at some random guy, "No way are you blaming me!" but it didn't occur to me until later to wonder what that was about.
"Hey, what's going on?"
Every muscle in my body tensed at the sound of his voice, and I couldn't decide whether to fling myself into his arms or run out of the room as fast as I could.
"I, I don't know, Luke. Grace found her, I guess. I'm not sure..."
"It's alcohol poisoning," I spat. I turned toward them and saw him standing behind his sister, looking at Judith. "She's had so much alcohol, it's caused her to go into a coma." They had no idea. Neither of them had ever lived through anything like that. I wondered bitterly what it was like to not have this as a reality.
The paramedics loaded her in the ambulance and the police had arrived to shut down the party. He came over to where I was watching them in the driveway.
"Intense," he commented innocently.
Life must be nice as a Cleaver.
"Yeah," I sneered, and then turned to walk home.
He began to follow me. "Grace..."
"No!" I turned and faced him. "Just, go. Leave me alone!" I said, as I walked away from him.
---
The light was on in the shed. I figured it would be. Since Rove wasn't anywhere around when the paramedics were there, I figured he had finally had enough and gone home. I knocked and opened the door.
"Hey," I said.
Adam looked up in surprise. He offered a small smile, but not before I saw his face fall.
"Just me. Sorry," I said.
He shrugged. "No, it's...." Again, his shoulders lifted and fell. "Party got over?"
"Oh yeah," I laughed bitterly and sat on a stool. "Got over with a real bang. Judith passed out from alcohol poisoning."
His eyes flickered away from me for a second, and I could tell he was thinking of Joan. He looked at me again, and while I appreciated his compassion, a sharp stab of loneliness pierced through me as I wondered if another pair of eyes would ever show the kind of concern for me that Adam's held for Joan.
"Can I crash here?"
"Unchallenged."