Gracie by Suzanne Weyn Page A

window when I realized Jena wasn’t with me. I wasn’t too worried; she’d probably stopped to check out a cute guy somewhere.
    I saw her step out of a nearby shop with a strange look on her face, like she was pleased with herself but scared, too. “What?” I asked as she hurried toward me.
    Without answering, she grabbed my arm and pulled me into an alley between shops. She’d shoplifted two bikini tops and two bottoms, one for each of us. I was horrified, then excited, and then thrilled.
    We were walking on the wild side and tossing away the rulebook!

    We found a public bathroom and put on the suits. Then we lay out on the beach until the sun was low in the sky and our skin felt scorched.
    Farther up the beach at the clam bar, we spotted two cute guys. They were probably college kids down for spring break. We hung around nearby, smiling at them and flirting, until they finally invited us to sit down with them at the counter.
    They ordered us all some beer and fried clams, which meant they were over eighteen and could drink. They seemed to assume we were old enough, too, and we didn’t bother to tell them any differently.
    On the deck, a band of guys was playing country music. The cuter of the two guys, Rob, asked Jena to dance with him. Out on the dance area they put their arms around each other and swayed to the music, both appearing slightly unsteady.
    That left me alone with the guy named Adam. When Jena and Rob began kissing on the dance floor, it got sort of awkward sitting there watching them. Adam suggested we go for a walk along the beach. We walked for a while as the sun set. Adam kept asking me questions that I sensed were meant to help him find out whether I was over eighteen. I did my best not to give him a direct answer to any of them.
    I was feeling the effects of the beer, and I wanted to keep on being the wild girl I’d set out to be: the new, carefree, wild Gracie Bowen. I suggested that we could sit in the back of my car if he wanted. He knew what I was suggesting and agreed right away.

    It was nearly dark as we crawled into the backseat. He began kissing me, and I leaned back and let him. I wasn’t madly in love with him or even wildly attracted to him. I hardly knew him! I had just never made out with a guy in the backseat of a car, and I knew a lot of girls had. I wanted to be like them, the other girls, not like me.
    But my planned make-out session was abruptly interrupted by a glaring white light flooding the backseat.
    Looking around Adam’s shoulder, I saw Officer Sal staring down at me, aiming a flashlight in my face!
    And then I was squinting up into the light at Dad!
    Dad?
    Was I having some kind of nightmare?!

Ten
    Dad didn’t go ballistic, as I’d expected. Instead, he seemed to want to talk. I didn’t. “You can stop pretending you care now,” I snarled at him, leaning against the passenger-side door, staring out into the darkness. “Nobody’s watching!”
    Maybe it was the beer making me so bold. Maybe it just made me sick that he’d made such a big show of coming to find his bad runaway daughter when normally he couldn’t give me the time of day. What a hypocrite!
    â€œGracie, what the hell did you think you were doing?” he asked.
    â€œLike you really want to have a conversation?” I shot back. If he did, it would have been the first time ever, at least with me.
    â€œI do,” he insisted.
    â€œGo ahead, talk,” I challenged him.
    He opened his mouth but no words came out. I knew he couldn’t do it—wouldn’t do it. How could he possibly talk to me? I was a girl, and now I was a bad girl. Why should he waste his breath talking to me?
    We drove in silence for the rest of the trip. He only spoke again to tell me that Jena’s parents had also come to take her home. When we came in the back door, Mom was waiting. “You’re okay?” she checked