Free The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain by Cath Crowley Page B

me alone. Tell her that.’
    I imagine trying to tell Faltrain anything. I decide to just keep my mouth shut.
    Â 
GRACIE
    She told everyone I stunk like the toilet , I text Jane. My life is over .
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JANE
    Did you?
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GRACIE
    Well, yes. But I don’t think that’s the point, Jane.
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MARTIN
    Don’t listen to them, Faltrain. Just don’t bloody listen to any of them.

21
    only have eyes for phrase : to desire
nothing else but;
    open the eyes of phrase : to make
someone aware of the truth
GRACIE
    Have you ever tried really hard to avoid someone? All of a sudden you start running into them everywhere. It’s like they’ve found some way to clone themselves. Either that, or when you like someone, everyone starts to look like them. Even the fifty-year-old man in the milk bar on the corner looks like Nick in the right light. Either I’m living in a world where there are five hundred Nicks, or five hundred imagined Nicks. And either way, I’ve seen every one of him.
    Mum sent me to Safeway to buy some garbage bags for the nursery and Nick was in aisle three looking at the cookware. Now unless he suddenly got the urge to steam some vegies at four in the afternoon, I’m putting that one down to my imagination. And unless Nick’s hiding some big secrets, I’m pretty sure that last week’s sighting in the shopping centre toilets was a false alarm too.
    Inside the coffee shop in the city today is the real thing, though. And I have nowhere to run. We’re both standing at thecounter, waiting to pay. My milkshake is starting to circle in my stomach, swirling up to my throat. Please, just don’t let me vomit on him, I think.
    It seems stupid not to say anything.
    â€˜Nick, hi.’
    â€˜Gracie, I wasn’t sure if it was you.’
    You’ve known me for two years. I’m standing two feet away. I can see how you might be confused.
    â€˜What’s up?’ he asks.
    What’s up? Let’s see, my social life is over, everyone in school is talking about me, and the person with her mouth open the widest is your new girlfriend.
    â€˜Nothing much,’ I answer.
    Why would you watch me for months, and then dump me after one date? Okay, I’ll admit, one very bad date, but still, just one date?
    I let him pay for his drink first and then I wave as he walks out of the shop. I actually wave. Faltrain – I can hear Jane now – you never, never , wave at them.
    The thing is, as I watch Nick shift from one foot to the next, looking everywhere but at me, there is a small part of me that doesn’t care anymore. A very small part, because he still has that sexy white t-shirt on and his hair still falls across his face, but there is definitely something missing.
    I walk all the way home trying to work it out. And then it hits me. His eyes. All that time at the shop, he’d never once showed me his eyes.
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NICK
    I’ve seen her everywhere. I mean everywhere. In the supermarket. In the coffee shop. I even walked into the girls’ toilet by mistake at the shopping centre and she was there . She seems different now. Something’s gone. I’m not interested anymore. I wish she’d just leave me alone.

22
    splinter verb : to break off from the
main body
GRACIE
    Today is the first soccer match I’ve missed in three years. I got up this morning and kept thinking it was Sunday. Saturday means I should be in the middle of a game. I wait at home most of the day, hoping that I’ll hear Dad’s car. I press my face against cold glass, write Hi Dad in the mist my warm breath leaves on the surface.
    Mum phones me from the nursery. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s not coming home today, Gracie. Come down and help me close up?’
    â€˜I don’t feel like it, Mum,’ I say, and hang up.
    I ride my bike to the field. The teams have trodden their story into the ground. The score is still up on the board. We won. And I