Chapter Text
The counselor’s office is remarkably drab. At least, the waiting room is. The walls are grey and two of them are entirely blank aside from peeling paint and old holes where thumbtacks used to be. A secretary sits at a computer and the clicking of her nails on the keys is far from comforting, breaking Grace’s focus on the muffled conversation behind the door more times than she’d like to admit. It doesn’t matter much anyways—all she’s heard is Diana’s name and a few mentions of the infamous family emergency that landed her here in the first place.
“What could she possibly need four whole weeks for?” A voice groans, and bodies shuffle in the office behind the frosted window on the door.
That’s a good question, Grace thinks, but she chooses not to dwell on it.
Her eyes flick to the blueish carpet beneath her sneakers. It is dark and fraying where the floor meets the walls. It’s almost humorous how outdated this room is, especially considering all of the expensive renovations the school had been bragging about when the exchange program was first shoved down Grace’s throat. She remembers sitting in her bedroom with her laptop open by her feet, the face of her probation officer pixelated on the screen by her shitty wifi, rambling on about how exceptional an opportunity it was for a girl like her.
Grace hated that; girl like her. It made her sound so small, like just another email in an inbox—a diagnosis on a clipboard. He made it sound like it was a choice she made, to be this way. He speaks of feelings like they’re facts and he forces her into boxes that society can swallow. He needs to fix her, after all. It’s what he wants and what her family wants and it will soon be what the world wants too. She can’t blame him. It’s his job in the end, and maintaining her petty crime streak will never outweigh his paycheck. If Grace were a softer person she would consider conforming for him. The thought would cross her mind every time she watches his brow crease in worry and she would contemplate a life of peace for both of them, a life where Grace is a sweet thing who bends; never snaps.
The door swings open in front of her.
“Grace? You can come in now, hun.” The counselor says, and Grace’s eyes latch onto her impossibly crooked bangs.
She clenches her teeth before her brash laughter can escape her. Grace knows then she will never be a soft person, and her probation officer likely won’t know of any peace until she is eighteen.
She slings her bag over her shoulder and follows the counselor into the office. This room is smaller and significantly warmer. There is one window and it is closed, blocking out the cool air of October as leaves float by outside. Grace notes the cluttered state of the space, papers scattered across a desk with a stack of folders to the left of an iced coffee. A ring of condensation has seeped into the wood and the sweat forming beneath her jacket tempts her to run her finger through the water.
“So! Hi, Grace,” the counselor steps around her desk, narrowly missing another man tucked into the corner on her office phone, “I’m Ms. Castillo, and I’m gonna be functioning as your assigned counselor while you’re here, okay?”
Grace nods before dropping her bag onto one of the two empty chairs in front of the desk, “Yeah, I know all that.”
She plops down next, bringing her knees to her chest. The counselor eyes the souls of her shoes and how they press firmly into the cushion of her chair, and Grace notices but doesn’t shift. She settles into the office and unzips her jacket, already stuffy and tired of being tossed around. She feels her phone buzz in her pocket and, in spite of the poster sprawled across the side of a filing cabinet detailing the negative effects of screentime, pulls it out to check the notification. It’s her brother, a simple check-in from across the world. She’ll answer later, she decides.
“Great, great…” The counselor mumbles, her eyes narrowed and her cartoonish smile replaced by something more impatient. It’s a look Grace is used to receiving. “Well, there was a small issue with Diana, who was supposed to be your volunteer shadowee—”
That’s not a word. Grace frowns.
“Mhm.” Grace nods. Her aggression is far from passive.
She’s heard all of this twice now, and she is going to lunge at someone if she has to roll her eyes through it again. She is not a child but no one ever seems to understand this. The sixteen years she has spent growing into her body and festering in an echoing house of avoidant, half-aware family members is forever undone in the minds of strangers. They see her, soak in her attitude, and they think they understand. She must be a troubled young woman with the mind of an angry toddler; development stunted by parents who simply don’t care to give her the attention she needs—the attention she’s been arrested for once or twice now. Maybe three times, but who’s really counting.
Grace doesn’t need attention, and, if she did, she would never seek it out from her parents of all people. If it were up to her she would’ve moved out years ago with a last name so far from the old one you’d think she was trying to scrub herself of something—of an evil seeped so deeply into the blood of her family that the only way out was by draining herself and starting new. She used to daydream about her rebirth. She’d run out in the sun and dirty her church clothes, chasing after the kind of freedom a girl can never have. She’d press her forehead to the glass of her brother’s car window and watch the yellow lines of the road blend into each other on the way to the minimart, asking him what he thinks about their father’s friends and their mother’s pills.
She can’t remember the conversation they had the last time she was sat in his passenger seat, she just knows they were both too old to pretend they had a destination. Perhaps the radio was on.
The man on the phone mumbles a quick thank you, goodbye before slamming it back onto the receiver. He is glowering down at Grace like she has said something especially offensive, like it is somehow her fault he doesn’t know how to do his job. He turns to the other counselor and grumbles something out to her below his breath.
“They’re sending Akire down now,” he attempts to whisper, but his proximity to Grace keeps him relatively audible, “I still think it’s a bad idea. And I don’t like pulling kids out of physics.”
The woman waves him off and sits back in her own chair across from Grace, shaking her head and glancing at her computer. Whatever she reads does nothing to brighten her mood, and she silently looks back at Grace, then at her shoes, then at her face again, scrunching her nose and cocking her head to the left.
“Do you have to sit like that, hun?” She asks, her voice small and sharp at its edges.
Grace shrugs, “Do you have to call me hun?”
The counselor’s shoulders tense and she leans forward with her hands folded atop her desk. She looks at Grace like she’s sizing her up, and Grace thinks that people like her shouldn’t work with teenagers. She clearly has no patience for any antics at 7AM and the Diana problem has already worn her thin—perhaps even stretched her sanity as far as it can go this early in the morning. Her lips part but before the woman can reply the door behind them opens gently, and Grace turns her head to see the secretary from the waiting area.
She doesn’t spare Grace or the man by the phone a glance, “Did you call 1125 for Wolfgang Akire?”
The counselor grins and nods eagerly, “Yes! Yeah, send him in.”
“‘Kay,” mumbles the secretary, and she steps back and opens the door wider, revealing the student that was once half-hidden behind her stout frame, “right in here.”
Wolfgang Akire is tall. Taller than the secretary as he walks past her and taller than the counselor as he shakes her hand. His hair is a dark, messy heap atop his head and his skin is at least four shades lighter than Grace’s, although her deep tan likely doesn’t help. He introduces himself to the woman behind the desk and his voice is quiet, soft, as if the crowdedness of the space calls for secrecy. Grace wonders idly if he’s always whispering like that or if he’s just sort of socially inept, fumbling around with his long limbs and unkempt hair in a way that makes him seem almost intentionally unaware. His crewneck is royal purple and one size too big, awkwardly hanging from his lean frame and hiding his hands up to his knuckles even as he pulls his arm back to his side. He turns on his heels and his backpack swings with him, staring very briefly at Grace and then at the empty chair next to her.
“Should I—” he begins to ask, but the counselor cuts him off.
“Yes! Please, sit. This won’t take long—I’m sure you don’t want to miss too much in physics.” She chuckles, but the sound of it is gauche and painfully forced.
Wolfgang does as he’s told and drops his bag by his feet. There is something to be said about the way he chews at his bottom lip and hikes up his sleeves whenever they fall past his wrists, reaching down to pick at the hangnail on his index. He doesn’t appear to be nervous, not in his face, at least, but rather confused by something. It is only when he offers Grace another quick glance from the corners of his eyes does she realize that she is quite the elephant in the room.
She doesn’t particularly like being thrown sideways looks, certainly not by teen boys and certainly not before 8AM. She would cuss him out for it if she had the energy, tell him to keep his damn eyes to himself. That if he’s so nosy he should just ask who the hell she is and what she’s doing here with him—not that he’d enjoy the answer.
But Grace is tired and still sort of jetlagged from her sixteen hour flight, so instead she opts for twisting in her chair until she’s fully facing him with her back on the armrest. She blinks once, twice, slow in her scrutinizing as she takes in the image of this Wolfgang Akire.
“I’m Grace Madison.” She says before the counselor can introduce the two of them, and she extends her arm out with her palm open.
Wolfgang’s gaze first finds her hand, and she watches him linger on her ring; Vivienne Westwood. It was her mothers before Grace had swiped it from her jewellery box years ago. It pairs well with the other silver bands wrapped around her long fingers, highlighting the chipped blue polish on her freshly filed nails. Once he’s memorized it his eyes move swiftly to her face, darting around sporadically as if he’s counting her freckles. She sees now, for the first time, the indigo hue of his irises. They’re watchful—pretty, almost.
“Wolfgang.” He replies very simply, his fingers interlocked in his lap.
Grace’s brow furrows, “What, I don’t get a handshake?”
His lips part to say something but he releases the thought immediately, instead opting to comply and shake her hand. His palms are sweaty, and Grace wonders if he also noticed the rise in temperature upon entering the office.
When he takes his hand back he turns to face the counselor, and then quickly mumbles to Grace, “Hi.” His eye contact does not return.
She scoffs and lets her head fall back, her spine bending over the arm of the chair. There is little cushion and the position will leave her sore in a minute or two, but she does not move. Her hair falls from her back and grazes the carpeted floors, released from its usual elastic after being straightened with her host mom’s flat iron, and a thought erupts from her hazed, early-morning mind as she drags her fingers through a sea of blonde.
“Why can’t I just shadow my host kid or whatever? Y’know, Dwight.” Grace asks pointedly, craning her neck to see the counselor’s face over the horizon of her desk.
The woman pauses. She looks to the man in the corner of the room, who has been silent with his arms crossed since he hung up the phone.
“Hybrid school makes it hard,” he shrugs, “Dwight does dual enrollment. He’s online for three days every week because of his college courses. The Wilhelms were overwhelmingly happy to host every year but he wouldn’t really work for shadowing—”
“—As a shadowee.” The counselor woman insists, and Grace uncurls in her chair just in time to catch the curious furrow of Wolfgang’s brow. She snorts.
The man takes a deep breath in, “As a shadowee, yes. Thank you, Martha,” he says through gritted teeth before redirecting his attention back to Grace, “that’s why you were never paired with him.”
Wolfgang shifts in his chair, “I think he goes by Ulysses now.”
“Holy shit, does he really?” Grace asks, “That’s almost worse.”
Wolfgang shrugs but his smile is unabashed. Grace sees a dimple appear in his right cheek and something adjacent to fondness unfurls in her chest. She balls the feeling away in her fists and tucks her hands into her lap.
“Language, Grace,” the woman carefully chastises, a cartoonishly poor Australian accent overtaking the rest of her sentence, “surely crassness like that isn’t allowed down under either.”
Grace grimaces, “Don’t wink at me.”
The man in the corner makes a strangled noise, a laugh caught in his throat that clearly was not meant to escape. He tries to disguise it with a cough but fails, deciding in his defeat to just head for the door with his tail between his legs. When he swings it open Grace is close enough to feel the chill of the waiting room, and she leans back in search for the AC on her skin. She deflates back into her seat when he turns and blocks the airflow.
“I’ve gotta be in the lobby in five, but are you all set with them?” He asks the counselor, “If Akire agrees.”
Grace watches Wolfgang’s shoulders tense at the sound of his name before glancing back at the man from over the back of his seat.
“I still don’t really know why I’m here.” Wolfgang says, and somehow that pisses Grace off so much more than the stuffy room or the sunshiney counselor or the fact that this is all happening before first period has even ended. She just said openly what was going on. If he was listening at all—if he had any semblance of a brain—he should have gathered enough context clues to piece together ‘why he was here.’ He is here to spend the next month with Grace Madison forcefully glued to his hip, and this should be relatively obvious based on the conversation that he has witnessed firsthand, but no.
No, Wolfgang has somehow dodged every single hint from the girl next to him. He has spent five minutes sharing his oxygen and already decided he doesn’t like her—that he doesn’t like her accent or the shape of her eyes or the way her hand felt in his, and now he’s feigning ignorance. She must not be what he’s here for, because clearly Grace Madison isn’t good enough for this wimpy, uptight prick of a boy to her left. She is to him what she is to her family and to the counselor and to everyone she’s ever met; obnoxious and unladylike and so terribly abrasive.
“Jesus, how fucking dense are you?” She snaps at him, leaning over the opposite arm of her chair to invade his space. She looks at him like he is a challenge, and Grace has never stepped down from a challenge. Wolfgang turns, but before he can say anything Grace continues, “Unplug your ears, how about? I just said I’m meant to be shadowing someone, and he just said why I can’t be shadowing that someone. Do the math, shit-for-brains.”
He seems puzzled by her outburst, and Grace resents that reaction. She resents the way the counselor sighs and excuses herself to follow the man into the waiting room, like Grace is just a thorn in her side. She doesn’t want to be annoying. She does not yell with the intent of mildly inconveniencing someone’s afternoon, or giving them a half-hearted migraine that will fade by the time they’ve forgotten about her. She wants her voice to echo, to last. She wants her rage to be matched in full by someone who knows she is more than just a temporary hassle. She wants to argue like someone whose anger carries weight and meaning and won’t be washed out of her by the time adulthood rolls around. Grace yearns so badly to be recognized as a loud girl who will one day be an even louder woman—a woman whose passion was not snuffed out by what people desire for her to become.
Grace is not palatable. She doesn’t want to be palatable.
With the door closed behind them Wolfgang finally parts his lips to speak, but nothing leaves him. No sound is made to break the silence of the office, and for a moment Grace is terribly disappointed. She doesn’t know what she was expecting from this boy but she knows what she wanted, and she knows now, in his speechlessness, that she is not going to get it. That he is going to shrug her off and turn in his seat again and pull out his phone. She knows that Wolfgang could probably fall asleep in that chair next to her and have a lovely dream of a much nicer girl, because her words are not a threat to take seriously. Her fire is not something to be stoked or respected.
And he does turn, and Grace gets halfway through twisting to grab her messenger bag and leave before he speaks.
“I was just clarifying.” He says. His tone is flat but bitter, like he’s trying actively to get over it—to not waste his energy in one go, “How was I meant to know that that had anything to do with me?”
Grace’s grip tightens on the leather straps of her bag. Her fingers curl and she hears a keychain clatter next to her. Wolfgang still doesn’t face her, but his brow is furrowed. He is peering down at the hem of one of his sleeves and picking at a loose thread.
Grace releases her fist.
“Well,” her bag hits the cushion with a thump, “simple context clues, ain’t it? Why else would they have called you down here, soybean?”
He shifts, and his head twitches to the left, “I don’t know. I thought I was in trouble originally. Then I saw you.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” She hisses out, and Wolfgang finally turns.
“I’ve never seen you before! I didn’t know what was going on. My counselor didn’t explain anything to me—this isn’t even his office!” He’s yelling now, bracing himself with an iron grip on the arm of his chair, “Who even are you?”
Grace scoffs, “Who am I? Jesus, fuck! Who do you think I am?” She takes her time with each syllable, because Wolfgang is choosing to be a particularly slow boy, “What did you think of me when you saw me? Seriously, I want you to really think about this one. Really listen to my voice and use your brain, mate. Where d’ya think I’m from?”
His shoulders tense across from her. He sucks in a sharp breath and holds it there in his lungs for what could be seconds or hours. Grace doesn’t know anymore, she can no longer hear the ticking of the clock. All she can hear is her nails against the scratchy fabric of the chair and her rabbit heart beating in her ears. Her pulse is quicker than it was just a moment ago but she loves the feeling. It hasn’t come around in a long time.
Confusion, genuine and childish, crosses Wolfgang’s face before he deflates, “Australia?” He is quieter now, not that he was truly yelling before, his words more cautious than they are charged.
Grace freezes. She doesn’t really know what to do with that.
“Well,” she mutters, folding her arms over her chest and letting her weight fall back into the chair, “yeah.”
Wolfgang nods and diverts his gaze once again. “Okay.” He says, and that seems to be it.
They are silent again, and something odd goes unspoken, but Grace can’t exactly pinpoint what it is or what the dialogue would be. Some small part of her sort of hopes that when he opens his mouth he is going to name it, but he doesn’t and that’s okay too. Maybe some things are best left unsaid.
“I didn’t know we had an Australian program.” He says earnestly.
Grace shrugs, “Now ya do.”
A huff of air escapes Wolfgang’s nose and he hums. It’s something like a laugh, but Grace doesn’t know what part of her response is so funny.
“Now I do.”
They don’t have much more time to sit there before the door behind them opens again. The counselor returns with a light stack of papers in her hands, crisp and likely fresh out of a printer. She sets them down on her desk and narrowly avoids her coffee’s ring of condensation, avoiding eye contact with both of the students adjacent to her.
“Okay, Wolfgang—you were originally called down because your name is still on that shadowee list for the exchange program, and my friend here needs a new one,” Grace hates all of that, “But, Wolfgang can probably head back to class, because I think I’ve found another alternative that might work better for you, Grace, hun—” The woman rambles while sorting through her new papers.
“It’s fine.” Wolfgang surprises the counselor, and then he rolls the ball to Grace’s court, “I think.”
He peers at her from the corner of his eye, having returned to his previous awkwardness. The decision is Grace’s to make now. She can sit here and be hun’d to death by who might be the most incompetent staff member she’s ever met. She can waste away in this chair while they cycle through student after student, in search of the one she’d click with.
It would never happen, Grace thinks. She doesn’t believe in clicking anymore.
Her eyes find Wolfgang once more and she sighs, “Yeah, whatever.”
The counselor freezes, “Oh! Uhm…” She nods, slowly at first, but her enthusiasm replenishes as she glances between them, “Okay! Yeah, if this is alright with you guys then it’s definitely alright with me. It’s just two weeks of shadowing, but you guys are in five shared classes, hence why Wolfgang was selected in the first place, so you’ll be seeing a lot of each other. If something comes up or you find you aren’t getting along too great just shoot me an email, okay? We can always work something out.” She says that last part mostly to Grace, but she is already standing at the door with her bag over her shoulder and her arms crossed.
Wolfgang thanks the woman politely before he stands to leave, and he is the one to push the door open and hold it for Grace as she follows behind him.
They pass through the waiting room and into a bright hallway lined with lockers.
“Are you any good at physics?” Wolfgang asks. He’s looking down at her.
Grace shrugs, “Dunno. I’m decent at maths. Can’t be too hard.” She says, and she lets him lead them back to his classroom while she finally opens her older brother’s text.