• Grace Stilinski •

„Things come apart so easily
when they were held together by lies."

Grace just didn't get her father's lie out of her head, so she was still awake when it suddenly rumbled in the kitchen in the middle of the night. After that it was quiet. Perhaps Stiles, who had stumbled across his own shadow while trying to steal a midnight snack from the fridge?

Her rational thoughts calmed her down a little, even though her heart was still galloping wildly in her chest after the horror. Nevertheless, Grace slowly peeled herself out of bed and sneaked on quietly toward her room door, which she tried to open without a creaking of the hinge. She listened tensely into the hallway and was sure to hear a soft voice swearing. This voice, however, was so high that it could not possibly belong to her father or brother. Rather, it sounded as if it were from a girl or a woman.

With shallow breath, Grace had made a decision and reached for her épée. For safety reasons, this was neither particularly sharp nor pointed, but without the special protective clothing, it could possibly still hurt her counterpart. A little at least.

Her heart was still in her mouth as she sneaked out of her room and stopped at the foot of the stairs. The noises seemed to come from the kitchen, but it was dark on the ground floor. Quietly, the brunette climbed down the steps carefully, protectively holding the épée in front of her, and was able to catch a glimpse through the railing through the shaded dining room to the kitchen.

With her eyes slightly pinched, she tried to make a difference in the dusk outline, and in fact she could see how one of the shadows moved in front of the sink. This one had the shape of a tall lean girl, who seemed to rummage around in one of the lower cupboards. Skeptical, Grace sneaked closer, the weapon merely provisionally stretched out in front of her, because she no longer believed that the potential intruder was dangerous.

She hadn't even reached the dining table and was almost certain not to have made a single sound, when the girl turned around. Unimpressed, the stranger raised one of her eyebrows as she squinted at the sword, holding an apple in her hand, "What's the point of the giant toothpick?"

"What's the point of the noise?" Grace asked the counter-question, gnashing her teeth, and suspiciously eyeing the girl before pressing the light switch and blinking into the blazing light, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Visibly confused, the blonde stared at her and caused frowns, before making a movement with her head to the ground, on which all the food was scattered around, "I'm Malia and stumbled upon this," she said, making another head move to a tipped shopping basket, "It wasn't standing there the last few days."

So that was Stile's girlfriend. Slowly Grace let her épée sink. She hadn't thought that she would be that pretty. Especially not when she was in Eichen house, she added in thought, "Wait, I'll help you," she finally muttered, and bent down to clear the spilled food back into the basket. She noticed that her father had probably forgotten to put the frozen fries in the freezer. She sighed and didn't know if it was too late to make up for it.

"You're Grace, right?" Malia finally asked, curiously looking at her with the brown eyes as she stowed the dripping bag in one of the drawers in the fridge, and finally nodded. Her brother's girlfriend grinned, "With the fear you had, it seemed you have thought I was someone else."

"I wasn't scared," Grace promptly contradicted, turning to her with her arms crossed. Her grin had since been replaced by a mocking expression, "Yes, you were", she replied dryly, as if her statement wasn't just based on speculation, "I smelled it."

Grace officially branded Malia as weird, yet she did not respond to her strange statement. Together, they collected the spilled bags, cans, and fruit back into the basket, before Grace, shaking her head, watched as the girl returned to Stiles' room.

The next morning, Malia was gone. At least that was Grace's explanation for why she wasn't there for breakfast. The alleged story with the vase still haunted her in her head, but she had decided to wait a little longer with the confrontation. Because if her father and brother knew each other in safety, they might make a mistake.

"Does BHHS offer fencing classes?" Grace asked casually, shoving a large spoonful of Lucky Charms in her mouth.

"No, but don't you dare to think about joining the Lacrosse Team, that's my thing." Stiles grinned and loaded his bowl a second time full of the sweet colorful cornflakes he tried to stuff into himself in record time.

"Don't worry, I don't plan to steal you the show," she simply remarked, smirking, and began to stir in her milk lost in thought. In boarding school, fencing had been her thing and sometimes she thought that was the only thing she could do really well. She sighed sadly that she couldn't continue to practice her favorite hobby, "What else do they offer?"

"Cross-country, football, basketball, and we have a swimming team."

"The swimming team doesn't sound bad," the brunette pondered aloud, but her brother pulled a deplorable expression, "That doesn't start again until the next semester."

"Well," she moaned, while Stiles patted her shoulder with pity as he rose, "You'll find something, little sister."

After breakfast, Grace decided to call her best friend and former roommate Coralie, as the two hadn't spoken for days. Because in boarding school the school had long since started again and if she was honest, then she was already a little nervous for her first day at Beacon Hills High School, and hearing a well-known voice couldn't hurt.

Grace just closed her room door behind her, when she could already hear the cheerful voice of Coralie on the other side of the line, "Hey, how are you? Did you convince your dad to send you back?"

"I don't think it's going to happen so quickly," she sighed, plumping gloomily on her bed, which was suspiciously cracking. Perhaps the tiny single bed was already in need of a refurbishment, and not just the questionable decoration in her room, "Any news?"

"Lucas asked for you today." Said her best friend and sounded as if she still had her usual broad grin on her face.

Suddenly Grace sat straight in her bed, "Lucas Bolton?" She asked again in an unintentionally high pitch voice and could feel her rapidly pounding heart in her chest. Her bright eyes had been wide open, she felt as if a long-awaited dream had come true.

"You really shouldn't stay away for too long, otherwise your years of effort will be gone, Grace," she reproachfully responded, to which the addressee groaned wistfully. Lucas Bolton was her Lydia Martin. Since she first saw the boy with the stubby dark blonde hair at her old school, he had been her future boyfriend and/perhaps her future husband - not that he knew anything about it. But the fact that she had actually noticed her, made her ferne downright ecstatic, "I'll try."

"Good," she heard Coralie say, and eventually add pityingly, "You've got your first day of school tomorrow at this small-town high school, right?"

"Wish me luck." Grace sighed and was sure that she could certainly use a lot of it.