Free Finding Grace by Alyssa Brugman Page A

Shouter and Screamer
,
    I have lived next door to you for six months now. Thank you for the time you brought in my washing when it rained. However, I have some minor objections.
    One: Shouter, I object to the way you beat your dog after you have a fight with Screamer. Yes, I will admit that he is revolting and has no manners, but you have no one to blame but yourself for his odious lack of social skills and all-round offensiveness.
    Two: Screamer, I'm all for equality and I am the first to stand up for women's rights, but for a woman whose parents (I assume they are your parents, they have the same dulcet and soothing tones) clean your entire house twice a week, wash your car, do your shopping and clean your clothes, is it really necessary to protest so vocally every night about having to do the dishes?
    Three: Further on the dog issue. Maybe the reason he eats your flowers, your outdoor furniture, your shoes (and mine) is that he has learned that he will only ever receive attention after he behaves badly. I know this because I have only seen him happy once in your presence. He was galloping gleefully around the Hills Hoist with a now not-so-white sandshoe firmly in his teeth. You were spluttering and roaring as you ducked and weaved around on socked feet. I was amused.
    My advice to you, Shouter, is to leave her, she is a witch, you will be much better off.
    Screamer, just do the dishes, OK?
    I feel fondness only for the dog. You don't deserve him.
    I confess in advance to egging your house as I leave for work in the early hours of tomorrow morning.
    Grace
    The telephone rang. I figured I'd let the answering machine get it. It's me! No, actually it's Mum. We have thesame voice. I need to answer that. She'll worry if I'm not here.
    I could hear my own voice, but not, coming down the hall, “Are you there, Rachel darling?”
    I put the lid back on the box and pushed it back in its place behind the books and shuffle down the hallway to pick up the phone. I think about telling her about the spooky box but decide not to.
    I talk to Brody for a little while. That is, I talk. He grunts and then eventually he says, “You know, Rach, there's no pause on this game I'm playing… ”
    I say, “This is relevant to me because …”
    I love saying that. I use it at every available opportunity.
    He says, “Well, it's a hired game and I only have it overnight….”
    I get the hint and hang up.
    Brody used to be a nerd too. I remember one morning there was a loud bang from his room. Mum and I rushed in and found him lying on the floor unconscious.
    When he came around he told us that he was lying in bed half asleep when the wall started to shimmer. He said he lay there for a while looking at it. Eventually, he decided it must be a vortex into another dimension.
    Of course! That sort of thing happens
all
the time.
    So, naturally, he tried to jump through it. It turned out not to be a vortex into another dimension at all, but merely the sun shining through the trees and in through the window and creating a shimmering effect on the wall.
    I thought Mum might ban science fiction for a little while, but she didn't. Mum said, “The boy is not silly enoughto throw himself headfirst at his bedroom wall twice, surely?” She was right.
    Brody discovered coolness in his early teens. He found coolness and lost the power to string a series of words into a sentence. That's what being cool is, apparently, saying as little as possible. It gives one an air of mystique.
    After I hang up the phone I start doing the washing-up and it occurs to me that I don't know anything about this woman who sleeps in the room next to mine.
    Until now it has been as if she were blank, with no personality, except those clues given by her beautiful house.
    Until this moment I haven't really thought about it as Grace's house. I know that it belongs to her, but I haven't really thought about the Grace who owns this house and the Grace I'm with every day as the same person.