A Girl Like Gracie (4 page)

“
Yeah, I know. I look
twelve.”

Noah laughs. “No, that wasn’t what I was
referring to. You two just don’t look related, like, at all. Are
you Asian?”

“
Our dad is white, and our mom is
Korean. I take after my mom and Alfie takes after our dad,” I
explain.

“
That’s why you keep bowing?” he
asks.

I nod. “It’s not on purpose. I just keep
forgetting.”

“
Oh, right. Alfie did say he had a
sister living in South Korea,” he says. “So… you’re
back.”

“
I am,” I say, nodding.

“
Good,” he says.

“
Good?”

He doesn’t respond.

“
This house is massive,” I say to him,
looking around the room. There is even a huge statue in the middle.
Their foyer is definitely bigger than ours, even though our house
is bigger.

“
Not as big as your house,” Noah
says.

I look at him. “You’ve been to my
house?”

“
Many times,” he says.

“
So are you and Alfie
friends?”

“
I wouldn’t say that,” he says, but
doesn’t say anything else.

“
What is your house like?” I ask. “Is
it huge like this?”

“
Do you not know whose house you’re at
right now?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“
It’s mine. Or my dad’s,” he says.
“But I live here.”

“
Wow,” I say, looking at him. “Your
dad must be rich.”

“
Not as rich as yours,” he
says.

I look back at the crowd again, and see
Alfie walking towards me with Jace following closely behind. He
walks right up to me.

“
What do you think you’re doing?”
Alfie asks me.

“
Um… standing here,” I
answer.

“
I mean talking to him,” he
clarifies.

“
Alfie, come on man,” Jace says.
“Leave them alone.”

“
I’m confused,” I say. “What is wrong
with Noah? Isn’t this his house we’re at? He’s nice. Did I do
something wrong?”

Noah puts a hand on my arm.

“
Get your hands off her,” Alfie says,
then swings a punch at Noah.

I hear the crowd around us gasp, but I’m too
busy watching Alfie to notice anything else. His fist connects with
Noah’s face.

“
Alfie!” I yell at him.

Noah’s nose starts to drip blood.

“
Don’t let me ever see you near my
sister again!” Alfie yells.

Before anything else can be said, Alfie
grabs my arm and pulls me away. We go right out the front door, and
Jace comes out with us.

“
What were you thinking?” I ask Alfie.
“Why the heck did you just hit that guy?”

“
You can’t talk to him,” Alfie says.
“Or go near him. Or even
think
about him.”

“
Why not?” I ask. “He was nice. Not
that it matters. He’ll never want to talk to me again since you
punched him in the face without a reason!”

“
I had plenty of reason!”

“
You did kind of overreact,” Jace
says, coming to my defense. “All he did was talk to her and he
touched her elbow. What do you think he was going to do in front of
all those people?”

“
I don’t know,” Alfie says.

The front door opens up and Claire walks
out. She looks angry.

“
Alfie James, what were you thinking?”
she asks him, as she walks up to us. She doesn’t give him a chance
to answer. “Your father is in there trying to smooth things over
with the Pennington family. We will be lucky if they don’t
sue.”

“
He started it!” Alfie
says.

“
What did he do?”

“
He talked to Gracie,” he
answers.

“
That’s it?” Claire asks.

“
He touched her elbow. But he only did
that to make me mad,” Alfie says.

Claire lets out an exasperated sigh. “Alfie.
I just… I don’t know where to start. You guys go home while your
dad and I sort things out.”

She walks back inside and Alfie pushes off
the side of the house where he was leaning.

“
Maybe you could make a list of people
I am and am not allowed to talk to,” I say. “That would make this
all a lot easier.”

“
Don’t talk to any guys besides me.
Period,” he says.

“
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not
thirteen anymore,” I say. “I can talk to any guy I want to.
Besides, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was standing there all
alone and I was just thankful that the boy came and started talking
to me.”

The doors open up again, and I expect it to
be Claire or Dad, coming to yell at Alfie. But it’s not. It’s Noah.
He’s got a handkerchief pressed against his nose, and it’s stained
red.

“
Are you all right?” he asks
me.

“
I think I’m supposed to ask you
that,” I say.

“
Come back for seconds?” Alfie asks
him, in a taunting voice.

“
I just came to give you this,” Noah
says, handing me a piece of paper. I grab it from him, and then he
walks back through the doors.

“
What’s that?” Jace asks
me.

I hold up the paper.

It has his phone number on it.

“
It’s the number to his handphone,” I
answer.

Alfie tries to grab the paper out of my
hand, but I hold onto it tight. I put the piece of paper in my bra
where I know Alfie can’t get it.

“
You better not text him,” he
says.

I don’t respond. I just smile.

“
Gracie Nicole James, I am serious,”
Alfie says.

“
You know, I wasn’t going to, but if
it annoys you, I might just do it,” I say.

Jace who is watching the two of us laughs.
We both turn to look at him and he stops laughing immediately.

“
You two are fun together,” he says.
“I think senior year might be the best year yet.”

The limo pulls up in front, and a guy opens
the door for us. The three of us get in and head back home in
complete silence. I can’t help but wonder what this means for Alfie
and me. Are we friends again? I hope so.

Monday, August 22

Please leave.

A little over two weeks later, school
starts.

I’m ready for school to start.

I passed my written examination for my
driver’s test and now I have to wait six months before I can take
the driving portion of the test. Until then, I am going to be
riding with Alfie to school, which he does
not
seem happy about. Like, at all.

Whenever we got home from the charity ball
that night, Alfie asked me, in the nicest way possible, to promise
not to call or text Noah. I agreed, and then he went to his room.
He hasn’t spoken a word to me since that night, so I’ve been all
alone.

I mean, sure, I have Claire. That girl loves
to shop. She took me for a mani pedi on Saturday just so I’d be
ready for school today. She even helped me pick out a cute outfit
to wear and helped me fix my hair this morning. But besides her and
the hired help, nobody in the house is talking to me.

Well, Dad talks to me in passing, but I
don’t see him very much. He’s always working. I’ve talked to Mom a
few times on the phone, but she never talks to me for very long.
It’s almost like she’s avoiding me, which I don’t like.

So, here I am, all alone in this big huge
house. It’s kind of depressing.

That morning, when I come down for school,
Alfie and Jace are both waiting for me in the foyer.

“
She’s riding with us?” Jace asks, as
he follows Alfie to the door. I follow both of them.

“
I don’t have a choice,” Alfie says to
him, completely ignoring me. “She passed her written examination,
but she only had a permit for the next six months.”

“
Did you have your license in Korea?”
Jace asks me. Alfie gets in his car and slams the door.

I open the passenger side and climb in the
small backseat. Jace gets in the front side.

“
I didn’t need my license there. I
always walked and took the subway,” I answer. “Besides, driving in
Korea is a little scary. More than one of my friends at school have
been hit by a car while walking. Usually by a taxi. Those taxi
drivers are crazy.”

Jace laughs.

I look at Alfie, who puts the car in gear
and takes off. He is gripping the steering wheel so tight that his
knuckles are turning white.

“
Did you end up texting Noah
Pennington?” Jace asks.

“
No,” I answer.

Alfie’s grip loosens a bit.

“
Good,” Jace says. “That guys a bit
arrogant anyway. You’re too good for him.”

“
I doubt Alfie will let me text any
guy,” I say. “Does Noah go to our school?”

“
Yeah,” he answers. “And I don’t think
Alfie will try to stop you from texting any guy. Just the guys he
doesn’t approve of.”

“
Can we not talk about me like I’m not
sitting right here?” Alfie asks.

Now you know how I feel.

I want to say the words out loud, but I’m
too scared to make him more mad. Maybe I shouldn’t be. How could it
get any worse that it already is? Maybe if I start dishing it back,
he will see how much it hurts.

No. I can’t be that cruel to him.

I just wish he felt the same.

The rest of the way to school, Jace tries to
start a few conversations, but it always falls flat. Eventually, he
stops trying and we ride the rest of the way to school in an
uncomfortable silence. As soon as we get to school, Alfie gets out
of the car and runs away before Jace and I can even get out.

Jace gets out, and then helps me climb out
of the small backseat.

“
Don’t worry about him. He’ll come
around,” Jace tells me.

“
I’ve been told that, but I don’t
think it’s going to happen,” I say, grabbing my messenger bag from
the backseat and sling it over my shoulder. “But thanks
anyway.”

“
If you want to get even, just talk to
Noah again. He can’t stand that guy,” he says, as we walk towards
the school together. “When he saw the two of you flirting, he flew
off the handle.”

“
We weren’t flirting.”

“
Well, he was flirting with you,” Jace
says, then turns to me. “I’m going to go find your
brother.”

“
Okay. I’m leaving first,” I say, and
walk into the double doors of the school.

“
Hey, Gracie,” Jace yells from behind
me.

I turn toward him.

“
In America, you don’t have to tell
somebody you’re leaving first,” he says.

“
Right. Sorry,” I say, then turn back
around.

At least I didn’t bow that time.

I pull the schedule out of my backpack and
look at the room number of my first class. It’s on the second
floor, so I head up the first staircase that I see and my class it
just a couple doors away from the stairs. The school is easy to
navigate, so at least I won’t get lost.

In Korea, we stayed the whole day in the
same room. I’m going to miss that for sure. All of my classes are
each in different rooms. But at least my first class of the day is
math. I like math. It’s a good way to start the day.

I walk inside the room. Nobody is in there
yet, so I take a seat in the front. I’m short by American
standards, and I don’t want to get stuck behind somebody and not be
able to see.

A few minutes later, somebody sits in the
desk beside me.

“
Hey,” the guys says to me.

I look over and see a Chinese boy sit beside
me. He has an American accent, though, so he’s probably been raised
here.

“
Hey,” I say, bowing towards
him.

“
Are you a scholarship student?” he
asks.

“
Scholarship?” I ask.
“
Aniyo
. No.”

“
It’s okay to be a scholarship kid,”
he says. “I’m here on a scholarship. The other kids don’t really
bug us if we stick together.”

“
I don’t really understand,” I say.
“I’m not…”

“
Gracie,” a voice says.

I turn around in my seat to see Noah walk in
to the class. His nose is looking completely normal, thank
goodness.

“
Noah, hey,” I say.

“
You didn’t call me,” he says. “I’m
hurt.”

“
Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to make
Alfie mad.”

Noah walks over to the desk where the
Chinese boy is sitting.

“
Move it Yang,” Noah says. “I want to
sit by her.”

“
So sit on the other side,” he says,
but he does get up and move to a desk on the other side of the
room.

Noah sits beside me.

“
That was rude,” I tell
Noah.

He shrugs. “You don’t want to sit by
him.”

I roll my eyes and get up out of the seat. I
grab my bag and go sit by the boy that Noah called Yang.

“
Sorry about him,” I say, when I take
a seat. “I didn’t get to properly introduce myself. I’m Gracie
James.”

The boy looks at me. “I’m Austin Yang. And
sorry that I called you a scholarship student. I didn’t
realize.”