Grace Fairfax was never entirely typical. She lived in a town that was not entirely a town, in a home that was not entirely a home, with parents that weren’t really parents. Her entire life was a contradiction. She was born on March 16th, 1989, probably one of the most boring dates God could have picked for a birth. However, Grace was anything but boring. Her together. Her father was the quarter back of the football team and had gone on to play college ball. After an accident involving a field mouse running aparents had gone to high school cross the field, he dislocated his hip and was scratched from the team. Her mother had been the homecoming queen and gotten all the community service awards in high school. At high school graduation her father proposed and a year later they were married. Her mother never graduated from college and after his accident Grace’s father dropped out of college and enrolled in a local business school. He now sold cars for a living. Grace supposed he liked the competition of it and she secretly guessed that he took the fastest cars on late night test drives liking the speed of it all as if he was the car and he was running for the winning touchdown. Her mother was still involved in charity work, but Grace always wondered if she did it just to see her picture in the paper of if she honestly enjoyed helping people through endless cake walks and silent auctions.
When she was born her parents unanimously named her Grace. Which was ironic as Grace was anything but graceful. She often thought about this irony every time she tripped on her own feet or bumped her hip into the corner of a table. Grace also unfortunately shared her name with the frequently played song “Amazing Grace”. In third grade she felt special when her teacher, Mr. Robertson, called her Amazing Grace and pinned all her drawings to his desk. In seventh grade it got a little old when her first boyfriend, Benny, thought it was original and extremely romantic to call her his “amazing grace” before attempting to kiss her, but only succeeding in mashing his lips to hers and twirling his tongue about in a toothbrush-like fashion. Then last year she decided that she had had it when Rodney had drunkenly professed his love for her at the homecoming dance and told her that she was his “Amazing Grace” right before puking on her dress. It was then that Grace decided she wouldn’t be saving any more wretches like him.
Grace never had many friends though. Her mystery attracted plenty of boys, but they never stayed for long. She wasn’t shy; she just never found anything she had to say to any of the people she knew. She wasn’t snobby. She just had a feeling that they would never completely understand her, like she was speaking a foreign language. How did she tell the cheerleaders, football players that high school wasn’t the best thing that would ever happen to them? How did she explain to the partiers that alcohol wasn’t necessary to have fun? How did she tell the scholars that books and studying only made a person so smart? Sometimes she’d find a person she could identify with. Someone who had greater dreams than success in high school, but in the end they always ended up fading into the crowd. Grace, however, was a strict nonconformist. She did only what she wanted. She liked to drive fast and listen to loud music. She was an adrenaline junkie and loved doing anything that made her heart beat faster. She liked observing people and loved the real ones. She hated fake things and she saw this fakeness everywhere. In the fake laugh of her mother at the parent parties, in the way her father cheered at the TV screen, covering up the fact that he wished it was him playing.