GRACE, AGE 15
Grace started working at McDonald’s as soon as she was old enough to get a permit. She worked while friends came and went. They’d say hi, order hamburgers, fries, and sodas, and say bye. Or they’d sit at a table together, talking and laughing while she was busy behind the counter.
Salim Hadad, her supervisor, tried to schedule her for Sunday shifts. “I can’t, Mr. Hadad. I go to church with my aunt.” He said it was good a teenager took religion seriously, even if she was a Christian.
Mr. Hadad said she was his best worker. If she were older, he’d make her a manager. She never stood around idle, even at quiet times when no cars were in the drive-through, no customers at the counter. She washed tables, swept floors, cleaned grills, scoured the women’s bathroom, and restocked toilet paper and towels without being asked. She cleaned milk shake, soda, and coffee machines, refilled napkin and straw dispensers, anything to keep busy during her shift. Salim told her she could study, but she said her conscience wouldn’t allow it. “You’re not paying me to do my homework.”
Today Salim was rushing around, grumbling about a worker who hadn’t shown up. He grew more frustrated when two others couldn’t seem to do anything without bumping into each other. Grace remembered how overwhelmed she had felt the first few days until she caught on to the routine. She delivered a tray of Happy Meals to a lady with half a dozen girls in soccer uniforms. Filling drinks, she had the uncanny feeling of being watched.
When the woman and girls left, Grace stood ready to take the next order.
Patrick Moore stepped forward. Her stomach fluttered, and her heart picked up speed. He’d moved from Colorado at the beginning of the year and made the varsity football team. It wasn’t long before he became the star quarterback. Every girl in school had a crush on the blond, blue-eyed hunk with the ski-slope tan. Even the guys liked him. “Hi.” Patrick’s smile made her blush as he looked at her name tag. “Grace . . .” Stammering, she asked for his order. His smile broadened into a teasing grin, flushing her face hotter.
“Two Big Macs, two large fries, and a large soda. For here.”
Grace punched in the order. He gave her a twenty, and she made change. She put the food on a tray. Maybe he had a girl with him. She resisted the urge to see who it was. Lindsay? She was head cheerleader, and they’d been a couple for a while. Grace set the tray on the counter. Patrick seemed in no hurry to take it. “Nice to see you, Grace.”
She didn’t know what to say. He picked up the tray and took a step before turning around. “When do you get off?”
Her mind went blank for a moment. “Six.”
“I’ll give you a ride home.”
“I have a bike.”
“I have a bike rack.”
Patrick took a booth where he had a straight-shot view of her at the counter. Grace didn’t even notice an older gentleman standing in front of her until he spoke. “Ah, Cupid does his dirty work again.” He chuckled. “I’ll have a Whopper.”
She smiled. “You’ll have to go down the street to Burger King.”
Patrick Moore read a graphic novel while he waited. When Grace was ready to go, he took her backpack and carried it. She felt small walking beside him. He snapped her bike into a rack on his sea-mist Buick Regal. “Nice car.” Did he think her shallow for noticing?
“I’d rather have a Jeep Cherokee with a ski rack on top. This baby is three years old and has eighty thousand miles on it. My dad did a lot of traveling in his last job.” He opened the door for her. She slipped in and strapped on her seat belt. When he got into the driver’s seat, he looked at her. “My dad signed it over to me on my sixteenth birthday.”
“Nice present.”
“It’s got some kick.”
Patrick didn’t clench the steering wheel like Aunt Elizabeth. His hands were relaxed. He drove six blocks and gave her a sideways smile. “You’ll have to tell me where you live.”
If her face got any hotter, she’d set the car on fire. “I guess it is hard to read minds.” She gave directions rather than the address. She asked about Colorado. He shared his life story: born in Fort Collins, grew up in the Springs, loved to ski and snowboard; Fresno took getting used to after the Rocky Mountains. Fortunately, it was only a few hours’ drive to the coast. He wanted to learn how to surf. “What about you?”
What could she say that wouldn’t bore him? “Not much to tell. My parents died when I was seven. My aunt took me in. I go to school. I study. I work at McDonald’s. I go to church every Sunday. That’s my life.” She was far more interested in his. “Are you playing baseball this year?” She didn’t want to say she knew he’d played football and basketball, too.
“Yeah.” He laughed. “I love sports. Playing them and watching them.”
“Live games or TV?”
“Both.” He gave her a quick, smiling glance. “How about you?”
“I played soccer in grade school. I wasn’t very good at it.” She’d never had time to watch much television, and the last thing Aunt Elizabeth would be interested in was a sports program. “Turn right at the next intersection.”
Patrick pulled up in front of the house just as Aunt Elizabeth turned in to the driveway.
“Would you like to meet my aunt?” It wasn’t until the words escaped that she realized introducing a boy to her aunt might sound more serious to him than giving her a ride home and dropping her off.
“Sure. Sit tight.” He got out, retrieved her backpack from the backseat, and came around to open her door. She held the pack while he unlocked her bike and set it on the sidewalk.
Aunt Elizabeth stood just outside the garage, watching and waiting.
Grace made introductions. “Patrick is a student at Fresno High, Aunt Elizabeth. He moved here from Colorado. He gave me a ride home from work.” Grace couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“I gathered he gave you a ride home.”
Embarrassed, Grace took hold of her bike. Aunt Elizabeth smiled tightly as she shook hands with Patrick. “It’s nice to meet you, Patrick.” She drew back, a faint frown forming. “Moore. Colorado. Are you any relation to Byron Moore?”
“Yeah. He’s my father. You know him?”
“We work in the same building.”
“Small world.”
“Indeed.” An arctic wind had blown in. “Well, thank you for bringing Grace home safely.” She gave Grace a pointed look. “You have things to do.”
What had just happened? Grace thanked Patrick for the ride and watched him drive away. She wheeled her bicycle into the garage as her aunt took a bag of groceries from the backseat of her car. Her face was rigid. “What’s wrong?” What had she done now to annoy her aunt?
“Nothing.” Aunt Elizabeth hit the button to close the garage door as she went through the door to the kitchen. She set the bag of groceries on the counter. The chicken she’d put in the Crock-Pot smelled ready to eat. “I’m going to change my clothes.” She walked past Grace. “Set the table.”
When they sat down to dinner, Aunt Elizabeth said grace and snapped her napkin. Grace knew something was on her mind. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Patrick looks like his father.” She raised her head, her mouth tight. “Concentrate on school.”
Grace opened her locker, switched out her textbooks. When she closed it, she turned and bumped into Patrick Moore. Startled, she took a step back, blushing as he grinned at her. “I’ll walk you to class.” Everyone looked at them as they went down the hallway. Grace could imagine what they were thinking. What’s Patrick Moore doing with her? When she entered class, she made her way to her desk and sat dazed.
Word spread fast. Crystal caught up with her at lunch and wanted to know how long Grace had been going out with Patrick. Grace said she wasn’t. “Yeah, right. Come on! Tell me everything!” Grace insisted there was nothing to tell. Crystal snorted. “I heard he dropped you off after your shift at Mickey D’s.”
Gasping, Grace felt her face go hot. “Who told you that?”
“Someone who saw you.”
High school gossip moved faster than a mudslide, and Grace was mortified to find herself in the middle of it. She refused to answer Crystal’s question, but the girl was a bulldog. “If there’s nothing to tell, why are you blushing? Have you had sex with him yet?”
Yet? “He gave me a ride home. That’s all. He was being nice. It’s not like anything happened.” She headed for civics. Crystal fell into step beside her and gave her the scoop on Patrick Moore, whether Grace wanted to hear it or not. He took Lindsay to homecoming. Remember? Well, they went all the way. Then he dropped her like a hot rock and went out with Kimberly. He wasn’t a make-out artist or a kiss-and-tell guy, but girls talk. Grace had better be careful. Frustrated, Grace finally stopped. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because he was asking about you in the boys’ locker room!”
“How would you know that?”
“Nathan told me.”
Grace didn’t want to grab on to false hope regarding Patrick Moore. And she did very well telling herself that, until he showed up at McDonald’s again on Saturday. He brought his homework with him this time. “I hear you’re good at algebra.” She helped him on her breaks. He gave her another ride home. He talked about his dreams for a scholarship. She asked where he wanted to go to college. UC Santa Cruz, but his dad said it was a party school. Patrick laughed. His dad wanted him to go to UC Berkeley, but Patrick shook his head. “I’m not that smart.” Grace gobbled up every word he said all the way to the front door of her aunt’s house, and then he surprised her again. “Can I call you?”
“Sure.”
He handed her a fancy phone. “Here. Give me your number.”
She tapped in her aunt’s phone number and handed it back to him. He smiled as he tucked it into his pocket, just over his heart.
He called a couple nights later, but Aunt Elizabeth answered the phone before Grace could reach it. She gave Grace an annoyed look. “I’m sorry, Patrick, but Grace can’t talk right now. She’s doing homework.” Grace held out her hand with a pleading look, and her aunt turned her back. “You can see her tomorrow at school.” She hung up.
Grace wanted to cry. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I thought it best. You’re fifteen, and—”
“He just wanted to talk!”
“How do you know what that boy wants?” She looked exasperated.
“Every girl in school would die to have Patrick Moore call!”
“Is that all you care about? How popular he is?”
“No! He’s nice! I like him! He’s smart, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s smart. It remains to be seen how he employs his intelligence.” Her eyes darkened. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to ruin your life. I’m trying to teach you some common sense. Don’t base decisions on teenage hormones. Your mother did, and look what happened to her.”
Grace felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Nothing I do will ever be good enough for you.” Fighting tears, she pushed back the kitchen chair, gathered her books, and fled to her bedroom. She sat against the headboard and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. It didn’t stop the tears, but she could think again.
Mrs. Spenser, her Sunday school teacher, always said to pray when things got bad. Wiping her face, Grace poured her heart out. Is she ever going to forgive me for what happened to my mother?
The answer came like an arm around her shoulders and a gentle whisper. What troubled Aunt Elizabeth wasn’t Grace’s fault. Be still, and wait. I love you and I am here. I am always here. Wiping away the tears, she picked up her civics textbook and focused on what she had to get done.
Patrick Moore showed up at her locker the next morning. Later that afternoon, he appeared at McDonald’s. “Take a look.” He grinned as he handed over his algebra worksheet. He’d gotten 100 percent and a note from Mr. Edersheim: Good job! Patrick laughed, triumphant. “You’re a better teacher than he is.” He had another assignment. Was she willing to help him again?
A tiny warning bell went off inside Grace’s head. Was algebra Patrick’s only reason for seeking her out? Or was algebra an excuse because he really liked her?
Once Patrick fixed his attention on Grace, everyone at school considered them a couple. He walked her to class and sat with her at lunch. They were often seen together in the library, bent over textbooks and talking in low whispers. Grace had always had the reputation of nice-girl-with-a-brain, but as Patrick’s grades went up, he was seen as more than a handsome jock. Girls still pursued him, but he didn’t do anything about it. Nothing that Grace ever heard, anyway.
When Grace invited Patrick to church, he always had something else going on. He made it to Good Friday services and held her hand in the dim candlelight until Aunt Elizabeth gave them a fierce look. He squeezed her hand and let go. When Patrick asked her to junior prom, she didn’t think Aunt Elizabeth would let her go. But her aunt surprised them both: “You can take her if you have her home by eleven.” He seemed about to argue about the curfew, but one look at Grace silenced him. Aunt Elizabeth told Grace later she’d have to pay for her own dress, and it couldn’t come out of her college savings account. Grace found a green gown for ten dollars at the Salvation Army thrift store and added a pair of rhinestone earrings she’d bought for two dollars.
Patrick looked like a model in his tuxedo, and he knew how to dance. He held her close and made it easy for her to follow his lead. She felt little tremors every time their bodies brushed against each other.
He’d never kissed her, but that night in the car he did. “I like it that you’ve never been kissed by anyone but me.” Blushing, she asked him how he knew. “The way you keep your lips pressed tight together.” He leaned in. “Let me teach you a few things.” Grace put her hand against his chest. A shiver of alarm went through her when she felt how hard his heart was pounding and how warm he was. He drew back, studying her. “Okay.” He started the Regal. “You’re right. We don’t want to go down the road everyone else is on.”
She didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved.
When summer break came, Patrick flew to Colorado Springs. He called her twice the first week. He was staying with friends and having a great time. He didn’t know when he’d be back. She didn’t hear from him again. In mid-July, he walked into McDonald’s looking tan and happy. Sorry he hadn’t called, but he’d been on a camping trip in the Rocky Mountains. No cell reception up there. “We had a blast! I’ll tell you all about it when you get off work.” He took it for granted she’d been waiting for him all these weeks. Of course she had.
Compared to Patrick’s, her life was dull routine. She loved hearing about his close encounter with a bear and how many fish he caught in a mountain stream and how they tasted after being cooked over an open fire. She drank in his stories of how he had to help rescue one of his buddies by rappelling down a mountainside. The only things she had to talk about were James Agee’s A Death in the Family, Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and four or five other books she’d read from the college-prep list. She could tell the moment Patrick lost interest and asked him more questions. He could have talked for hours about the wilds of Colorado.
Senior year brought changes in their relationship. They spent more time studying than going out. They both needed scholarships. Patrick put his energy into football and dropped basketball. “I’m not tall enough to make it on a college team.” Grace maintained a 4.0 GPA, but her aunt insisted Grace needed more outside activities and community service for university applications. Grace wondered if her aunt was intent on filling every waking hour so she would have no time to be with Patrick. Grace dropped ten hours at McDonald’s to make sure that didn’t happen, and then volunteered at the local library literacy program. She took on the third-grade Sunday school class and spent Sunday afternoons at a local convalescent hospital running errands for the nurses, which usually meant sitting and paying attention to agitated dementia patients who never received any visitors.
By graduation, plans had fallen into place. Patrick would receive a partial scholarship to play football at UCLA. His parents had set aside savings, but he would still have to work part-time off-season. Grace qualified for several scholarships and received acceptance letters from Berkeley and UCLA. If she maintained her grades and worked part-time and summers, she could make it through debt-free. She decided on UCLA.
Aunt Elizabeth got out the shovel and went to work in the backyard. Grace stood inside watching her aunt through the sliding-glass door. Aunt Elizabeth attacked the ground with fury, turning soil. She didn’t have to ask what had angered her aunt this time. “Only a fool turns down Berkeley for UCLA.” Aunt Elizabeth was so angry she had tears in her eyes. “No matter what I say or do, it always turns out the same.”
“I’ll work hard, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“Oh, I know that.” She had a look of anguish Grace didn’t understand.
She and Patrick didn’t see much of each other that last summer. He didn’t show up at McDonald’s. She wondered if he’d gotten a job. Hurt, Grace tried to put him out of her mind. Aunt Elizabeth didn’t ask or say anything about him.
Grace moved into the university dorm and started working ten hours a week at a coffee shop on campus. She thrived in her classes. She ran into Patrick once. He’d scorned the dorm and rented a small apartment, even knowing he’d blow through all his parents’ savings by the end of the year. He’d been in a hurry, and they hadn’t talked long. A couple months passed, and then he called. He was struggling with grades. She listened. He told her how lonely he was. She was lonely, too. He told her how much he missed being with her. She said they could meet at the library, study together the way they used to in high school. He said they’d get more done if she came to his apartment. She knew that wasn’t a good idea, but he sounded so depressed, she agreed.
They only kissed once that first day. The second time, they managed to study a few hours before they ended up on the couch. The next time, Patrick didn’t want to stop. “I love you so much. I’ve loved you since I walked into McDonald’s and saw you behind the counter. I need you, Grace. Don’t say no.”
Grace thought she loved him, too, but she knew what they were doing was wrong. She could hear a whisper in the back of her mind. This isn’t what I want for you, beloved. Leave this place.
When she tried to get up, Patrick groaned. “You can’t stop now.” He pulled her down beside him. “You can’t turn a guy on like this and not go all the way.” She felt guilty for letting it go so far. How could she say no now? Before she could make up her mind, it was too late. She gasped in pain. Patrick said he was sorry, but didn’t stop. When it was over, he held her. “Let’s get married. We’re old enough. Grace, I can’t make it without you.” Sitting up, he lifted her with him. Drawing her into his lap, he dug his fingers into her hair and kissed her. “Don’t tell your aunt.”
Grace didn’t want to think about what they’d done. She didn’t want to analyze what she was feeling now. A bubble of panic? The feeling she was at a crossroads and about to take another wrong turn?
Grace closed her mind to the convicting voice. I don’t care. He loves me. He said so. And it’s too late anyway. She just wanted to be loved. Was that so wrong? She wrapped her arms around Patrick and kissed him back. “Yes. Let’s get married.” Maybe then everything would be all right.
Patrick’s family was pleased when Patrick called with the news that they’d gone to Las Vegas rather than have a wedding in Fresno. Byron Moore couldn’t have been more supportive. “Elizabeth will say you’re too young, but you saved her a bundle of money.” He laughed. “And I think my son knows his own mind.” The Moores suggested a reception over spring break. Patrick agreed. He hoped they would receive gifts and money.
Grace had to gather courage to call Aunt Elizabeth to share the news of her marriage to Patrick. She held her breath, wondering if her aunt would say something affirming.
Aunt Elizabeth gave a defeated sigh and said, “Why am I not surprised?” before hanging up.