Honey Girl(26)

Agnes plops down on the seat next to her. “Shit,” she says. “What is it? Are you in trouble? I’ve got us covered.” She rummages around in her pockets, and then her holographic fanny pack.

Grace reaches for her. “I’m not in trouble,” she reassures. “Agnes, Agnes, what are you looking for?”

Agnes looks up. In her hands she’s holding a small pocketknife and eight quarters.

Grace sighs. “I guess I can understand the knife? But why the quarters?”

“Pay phone,” Agnes says. “Duh.”

“Right, of course. But I’m good.”

Agnes shoves her knife and all her change back in her fanny pack. “So, you look like shit,” she observes. “Wanna talk about it or do that thing where we pretend feelings are stupid and don’t exist? I love that one.”

“The second, please,” Grace says. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and stares at the screen. Her home screen, the one she looks at now, is a picture of an orange grove. Her orange grove. She took it the last time she was there, last summer, before she needed to put her head down and finish her doctorate program. She misses it terribly.

It’ll look the same when you come back, Mom told Grace. Everything stays the same around here.

But Grace is not the same. Instead of the familiar fight to make room for herself in classes and labs, she finds herself in the unfamiliar terrain of the working world. And for the first time in eleven years, she finds herself weary and hesitant and wondering, Why did the universe choose me, if it knew I would have to fight tooth and nail? Grace has been busy, and now she would like to slow down. She would like to stop for a moment.

“You’re hurting yourself,” Agnes says suddenly. She grabs Grace where she’s digging red, painful half-moons into her arm. “You know what, let’s get some air. This place makes me remember when I was stuck here and crazy. Crazier. C’mon.” She tries to pull Grace up, but Grace makes herself heavy and unmoving, like the roots of a tree.

“Porter,” Agnes says, voice sharp. “Let’s go outside.”

Grace shakes her head, exhaustion hitting her all at once. Maybe it was the conversation with Colonel and rehashing it with Ximena. Maybe it is deciding, for once, to put her own needs first. “I want to call my mom,” she says. “I think I want to go away for a little bit. Visit the groves and have some space to breathe.”

Agnes narrows her eyes, fingers still working to uncurl Grace’s nails from her skin. “Not that it’s any of my business, but do you need to call right now? It’s ten at night and even later there. Maybe get some sleep first.”

“My mom is an insomniac like me. She’ll be up,” Grace says. She looks at Agnes. Her beret and sleep-mussed hair and moon-shadowed eyes. “I am tired,” she admits out loud. It becomes real, like that. “Maybe it’ll help to see what she thinks.”

Agnes closes her eyes. “Twenty minutes,” she says. “If you’re not back by then, I’m sending Ximena after you.”

Grace nods. “I’ll be okay” she says, the thought buzzing in circles around her brain. I just want to slow down. I just want to stop.

“Okay,” Agnes says. “Get your hands to stop shaking before you call.”

“I’m fine,” she says, disappearing out of the waiting room. “I’m okay.”

She picks a back stairway where the walls and concrete steps don’t echo too much. It’s cold and dusty and dark, and she crouches low on the steps, back against the painted wall. She presses Call and listens to the line ring until the voice mail clicks on.

“Figures,” she mutters. “Jesus fucking Christ. Just pick up.” Frustration boils over. This hallway has heard worse, if not from Grace then from someone else, frustrated or grieving or hiding.

One more time.

“Hey, Porter,” Mom says when she answers. Her voice is light, like perpetual summer. “I thought we were having a FaceTime call later this week? I’m in Germany.”

Grace sighs. Of course, another trip. “Sorry,” she says. “Is this costing you money?”

“The hostel has Wi-Fi,” Mom says. A deep voice comes from the other line, muffled and distorted. “Kelly says hi.”

Kelly is Mom’s fiancé that Grace has never met in person. He wasn’t around when she visited last summer. Grace has only met him informally through grainy video connections. “Hi, Kelly,” she says flatly.

“He just woke up,” Mom says. “Lightest sleeper I’ve ever seen. But nothing like your father. A yawn could wake Colonel up. Is he still like that?”

Colonel had awful nightmares when she was younger. She would wake up to get water and would find Colonel sitting in the dark, his hand in the shape of a gun pointed at an invisible enemy.

His hand never wavered, never trembled in its grip, even in his sleep.

“I don’t know,” she says truthfully. Sharone would never say. “Listen, do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“How long do you need? We’re heading out once we’re dressed for the day, and then I’ll lose the Wi-Fi. I’m all yours until then, Star Girl.”

Grace squares her shoulders in this empty stairway. A soldier’s posture. “I want to come visit you at the groves,” she says, willing her voice firm. “Things have been a little—a little difficult, and I just need some time away.” She pauses. “What do you think?”