Saving a Superhero

17: Grace+Explanations

"What were you thinking?" Grace squeaked as we exited the police station as free women. "Or course you four managed to get arrested in the middle of a scavenger hunt." She was trying to yell, she really was, but her voice peaked at a shrill squeak and only rose as her stress did. "If I hadn't come along you'd all be rotting in prison and I'd be living it up in Italy or Greece or Germany or somewhere tropical and warm."

When we were a safe distance from the station, and trust me, we were all waiting until we were two block away, all four of us turned on Grace like a pack of wild dogs on their prey. Well, all of us except Rory. She just flung her arms around Grace like we had succeeded in rescuing her from a fire-breathing dragon.

"You're alive!" Rory cried, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes.

Grace returned her hug reluctantly with an awkward smile gracing her lips. She patted Rory's back methodically and her eyes screamed, Stop hugging me! For as kind as Grace was, she had never been one to pass out hugs.

"Funny story about that..."

Rory had finally released her from her hug, which left Grace free to study her shoes and the pavement under them. She was scratching her neck with one hand, anything to avoid looking at us.

"Let us guess," Kennedy deadpanned. "You weren't actually kidnapped or ever in any kind of life threatening situation?"

Her lack of an answer was an answer in itself.

"Told ya, Rory," I mumbled, which earned me an elbow in the gut from Harper. The last thing we needed was another yelling match in the middle of the street.

"Are you going to explain why you forced us to follow your clues across the country?" Harper's arms were folded across her chest and she had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, the crowd parting around her like she was Moses and they were the Red Sea.

"Oh please, it wasn't across the country." Grace was struggling to find any purchase in the deep water she had jumped into. "You were only in a few states."

"I almost missed finals to find you!" Kennedy had also stopped, making a wall in front of Grace so she couldn't run away and avoid our questions.

"Oh, shut up about your finals," I mumbled. I thought Harper was going to leap over Grace and sock me so I wisely decided to keep my smart remarks to myself for the time being.

"If you hadn't ended up behind bars then you would have found me easy and been home by tomorrow," Grace offered. The fight had gone out of her, not that there had been much fight in her to begin with.

While a lot had changed over the two years since we all left home, she still didn't seem like she could hurt a fly equipped with a can of bug spray and flyswatter. But there was something off about her.

The Grace I remembered may not have been loud, but she was willing to fight back. She was silent during our phone calls but fierce when it came to protecting the rest of us during fights.

"Then maybe you should explain how that encounter with the Scholar's goons was supposed to end and why you were leaving them," Rory prompted. There was a tiny part of her voice--the tremble at the end--that made it very clear that she was hurt. She'd been so ready to defend our noble errand, no matter how dismal and bleak it looked, only to find that it was nothing but a ruse. She had believed in Grace with everything she had and now she was playing the fool's part.

While the rest of us were struggling to contain simmering anger, she was fighting tears.

A loud grumble ripped through our small crowd and a blush painted the tips of my cheeks and traveled up my ears.