Page 19 of Ghost on the Shore

I move opposite her, resting against one of the posts on the footboard and then nod, gesturing for her to tell me more.

She shrugs in response. “You know how this ends. I started skipping dance practice, Peter would meet me at his house after school when his mother was busy at the studio, and I gave it up because he made me feel good.”

“He took advantage of you.” She thinks on that for a moment and then nods. “Did he force you?”

Grace shakes her head. “Took advantage, used me? Yes, I’d agree with that. But he never forced me.” She swallows before admitting, “I liked it. I mean, I felt cursed by this woman’s body I was getting but wantednopart of, and then Peter comes along and he’s totally mesmerized by my hips, my breasts. All the things I was ashamed of, he made me feel desired because of them.”

“You said fifteen, so I’m assuming this didn’t go on for too long.”

“A couple of months, almost four,” she says as she counts it off on her fingers. “Prom was a huge big deal at my high school. Like, ridiculous when I think about it. That promposal trend may have even started at my high school.”

“Prom what?”

She laughs. “You know, where the guy does some ridiculous stunt and publicly asks the girl to prom?”

“Never heard of it. I went to a small Catholic high school. We had a prom but I didn’t go.”

She looks devastated on my behalf, which makes me laugh. “You didn’t go?”

“Nope. Only the boys with steady girlfriends went. It was kind of lame. I don’t think I missed out on anything.”

“My senior prom date asked me by having a pizza delivered to my house with the word prom and a question mark written in pepperoni.”

“That’s actually pretty funny...and creative.”

“He was a friend of mine and I kind of knew it was coming, so yeah, it was really great. We had guys running across the soccer fields during games with signs asking girls to prom, and one kid got suspended for sneaking into the school secretary’s office and asking over the loudspeaker.”

“Ouch.”

“Double ouch because the girl didn’t want to go with him.”

“That’s a lot of pressure, on the guysandthe girls.”

“It’s gotten crazier with every passing year. Last spring I heard that a boy from my school paid every kid on the marching band to show up at some girl’s house at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning while he stood on her porch dressed in a tux with a bouquet of roses.”

“I’m sorry, but that just sounds stupid.”

“I’m giving you some background just so you understand how big a deal it was.” Grace puts the back of her hand up to her forehead and acts like she’s fainting when she adds, “So you’ll understand just how traumatized I was when Peter told me he’d asked someone else to his junior prom.” She lets her arm drop and cracks a smile. “He was smuggling me over to his house like three times a week and I’d totally romanticized the entire thing, so I was beyond annihilated. Oh, and she just happened to be gorgeous and sweet and the most popular girl in the junior class.”

“What a jerk.”

She looks away and her eyes fix on her phone. “It’s after one o’clock in the morning. Seriously, I usually don’t drone on like this and monopolize conversations.” She laughs and looks at me shaking her head. “I’m sorry. You must be thinking I’m in need of a skilled therapist.”

“Nope. I’m just thinking about how I’d love to slap the shit out of Peter.”

“He apologized to me.”

“He did?”

She bites her lip and nods. “I ran into him this summer. I was walking out of a store and he was coming down the street. Totally random. Anyway, he asked me to get coffee with him and then basically told me that he still feels bad about what he did to me. He was sincere. I could tell it really had been weighing on him.”

“So you forgave him?”

“I did. There’s no use holding on to that kind of stuff.”

“You’re nicer than I am.”

“I don’t get that vibe from you. I think if you were in my shoes you would have forgiven him, too.” After a moment she says, “So now that I’ve ruined the evening…”

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