Grace turned away. The school was built on a hill that sloped up gently from rows of red-roofed houses. A long driveway wound towards the front arch where they stood; over the suburbs and the cypress trees Grace could see a glimmer of ocean and town, and the highway that led south to home. Except it wasn’t home anymore. She wondered which car they’d be driving to Saina’s and how there’d be enough space for all of their things.
Or maybe all the cars were gone, too. Her dad tended towards small, fast vehicles—he was dismissive about the SUVs that crowded the parking lot on Parents’ Weekend: “Gei bai pang zi,” he’d whispered to her stepmother, and then said loudly, for Grace, “Fat white man, fat white ladies, only they need such big cars. Ha!” Never mind that she’d understood the Chinese—he always doubted her ability to understand the simplest words and then expected her to get allusions to old Chinese poems and pointless ancient sayings—or that everyone would hear him. Grace couldn’t care less if other people’s fat parents heard themselves get called fat. No, what completely annoyed her was that “Ha!” Any time her father said something that he thought was funny in English, he had to add that “Ha!” at the end. Totally irritating.
Brownie tapped her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention.
“What?” Was she expecting a hug? Grace hoped not, fake hugs were so gross.
“Grace, dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your laptop, you know that it’s school property.”
Grace stared at her. “It’s not! We paid for this!” It was supposed to be part of the tuition package—a new laptop for each student, each year, with last year’s donated to the teen center. Except, oh god, now she was a poor at-risk youth. Maybe she could go to the center and find her laptop from last year.
“I’m sorry, dear, but unfortunately it’s the property of the school.”
“Brownie, you can’t take it away. My life is on there! And my dad paid for it, it’s not the school’s!”
“Well, Grace, unfortunately you have not paid for it. You actually began the year without any tuition being paid. We had no reason to doubt your family’s ability to do so, and we know that some accountants are not as vigilant with regards to tuition as they might be, so we chose not to press the matter, which clearly turned out to be a mistake.” She placed a hand on Grace’s laptop case. “It’s too bad that you have to be affected by these adult matters, but I do hope you understand.”
Oh god. This must be what a heart attack felt like. Something seizing her inside, pinching off her veins. Blood kept flowing out but no oxygen could get pumped in; it would keep on happening like that until her heart shriveled into a tiny thing and rattled right out of her chest.
“Fine,” said Grace, shoving her whole laptop case at Brownie. No crying. No. Crying.
The headmistress pulled out the laptop then held the case—really Saina’s old Marc Jacobs satchel—out towards her. Grace shook her head. Brownie sighed.
“Please, Grace. Your attitude won’t make this any better. You know we don’t want your bag”—they stared at each other for a moment, Grace refusing to move—“but we will need the power cord.”
“I know. Fine. It’s in here.” Grace dropped to the floor in lotus position and pulled her checkered rollie down so that its outstretched handle clanged into the brick floor. Jamming her hand into the side of the bag, she felt her way past the soft layers of her tank tops and dresses and jeans, searching for the white cord. “Wait, it’s not here. No, I know it is.” She looked up. “I’m not lying, okay?” Tears prickled against the back of her nose, crowded towards her eyes, threatened to pool over and spill. It took three more tries before her hand connected with hard plastic and she pulled out the cord.
Grace looked at Brownie again. The headmistress was staring at her cryptically. It wasn’t pity on her face. She wasn’t looking at Grace the way that Rachel had, with that totally cloying combo of pity and guilt. This was something different.
“Are you going to let me download my stuff, or does that belong to the school, too?”
“Of course you can download any personal information. I know you probably have quite a lot of photographs of, well, of yourself.”
“Yeah. So?”
Brownie sighed. “Grace, just go ahead and do whatever you need to do.”
Weird. She was acting weird, like she was the one who deserved to be upset or something. Maybe she just didn’t understand style blogs.
Grace powered the laptop on and plugged in her backup drive.
Finder > Grace Home > Photos > Morning > September.
Select All.
3,212 photos.
She dragged the folder over to the icon for her drive and dropped it in. A progress bar popped up. Two percent. Three.
Grace looked up at Brownie, who was tapping at her phone, probably trying to figure out text messaging or something. “You don’t have to wait out here. I’ll bring it over to the office when I’m done.”
Brownie hesitated. “It’s alright. I’m sure you’d rather not be on your own at the moment.”
Ha. “Um, I don’t mind being on my own. And it might take half an hour to copy everything over.”
“Then that’s what it takes.”
“Hi, Gracie, Daddy here now!”